SCOTTSDALE, AZ – There was nowhere to hide, no more excuses. Not after you’ve been field-rushed with cellphones shoved in your face, the rowdy unknown celebrating at your expense.
Not after that painfully silent three-hour flight from Dallas to Miami, stewing on the obvious staring back at them.
“We put ourselves in this situation,” Miami safety Keionte Scott said. “We were either going to lay down, or fight.”
Of all the culture change and roster building at Miami under coach Mario Cristobal, all the carefully crafted evolution from a program lost for two decades to one that could compete for national titles, no moment was more important than that Nov. 1 loss.
Not four years of organically building a roster of talented players and good people. Not millions spent adding impact players from the transfer portal.
But how those very players responded to everything being called into question after an ugly overtime loss at out-manned SMU left the program perilously close to taking an ugly step backward.
For the second consecutive season.
“There were some hard truths laid out,” Miami running back Mark Fletcher said of the players-only meeting shortly after the plane touched down in South Florida. “Everyone looking in the mirror. Am I the problem?”
And that, everyone, is what Cristobal was waiting for, what he had been building toward since the day he returned home in 2022 as the prodigal son, the former Miami offensive lineman in the program’s heyday hired to find glory once again.
This wasn’t walking into the football offices on Day 1 and declaring the cheesy “305” turnover chain is out. Nobody wanted that thing, anyway.
It wasn’t about reclaiming the “state of Miami” by out-recruiting all of those blue-blood programs (hello, Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia) that had infiltrated Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties and cherry-picked the best high school players.
It wasn’t the culture building of practicing hard, and playing for fun on game day. Wasn’t the physical and aggressive mentality he preached, or the idea that games are won by players. By dogs on the field — dogs that don’t back down from adversity, but thrive in it.
Like Michael Irvin and Jerome Brown, and Ed Reed and Jonathan Vilma, and all of those monstrously mythical champions of Canes past.
They all reached this crucible of winning, too — the undeniable question every player must face when adversity hits.
Am I the problem?
The same thing Jimmy Johnson drilled into Cristobal’s head when he was a player, the same thing Nick Saban drilled into Cristobal’s psyche when he was an assistant coach at Alabama.
At some point, all the coaching and culture change runs directly into human condition and complacency. More times than not, the easy road wins.
This time, unlike last season when Miami fell apart in the final month of the season to derail a College Football Playoff run, dogs won out. The program finally turned toward self-accountability.
Want to know when Cristobal knew he had turned this thing at Miami? When those players met on their own, and from it came an inner strength and fortitude not seen at Miami since the early 2000s.
Every game since the loss to SMU has been win or go home, every play a key to staying alive in the CFP race.
“Complacency is a daily fight,’ Cristobal said. ‘When you wake up, that’s the first opponent of the day, and you’ve got to attack it with intent and urgency.”
Football is a simple game, really. A game of want and will.
Are you tougher than the guy across from you, and can you win those individual battles?
“No doubt, 100%,” said Miami defensive end Rueben Bain said earlier this year. “Always been that way, and won’t ever change.”
Now imagine being told the one game where you did win individual battles, where you were the toughest on the field, didn’t count. And almost derailed the whole thing again.
But once the CFP selection committee adjusted late and awarded Miami a spot in the playoff field because of its head-to-head win over Notre Dame, the team that won four straight to finish the season hit another gear in the CFP.
They went on the road and won at Texas A&M, dealing with a brutal environment of 30 mph winds and one of the loudest crowds in college football. They missed three field goals, had a critical fumble, and still found a way.
They then physically pounded defending national champion Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl quarterfinal, grinding out a five-minute touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter — 10 plays, eight runs — to leave no doubt.
Now it’s white-hot Ole Miss in the semifinals, another obstacle to completing the turnaround Cristobal promised. Another opportunity to be the toughest guy on the field.
“Every group takes on the head coach’s personality, and I do see this team taking a very alpha approach to the game,” said Miami offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson. “Everybody wants instant coffee, but sometimes things take time. Sometimes when you slow cook, it’s better.”
Or when ‘am I the problem” eventually becomes “I am the answer.”
All the way to the national championship game.