‘The U’ returns: Why did Miami football take so long to get back to the National Championship?

The question over “ The U” being “back” has been a staple of college football discourse for the better part of two decades and has often been used as a meme poking fun at the misfortune of Miami football. It makes sense considering that a once dominant, culturally significant program that put up five national title banners between 1983 and 2001 suddenly plunged into a quarter-century of middling results. The nostalgia for Miami’s glory days only intensified with ESPN’s “The U” 30 for 30 documentaries, making it a yearly question over whether the Hurricanes could get over the hump and return to those heights.

Fast forward to today and Miami stands just 60 minutes away from putting national title No. 6 on the board when facing Indiana for the College Football Playoff National Championship in their own house at Hard Rock Stadium. One can certainly make the argument that the “U” indeed returned this season as several elements of this year’s squad mirrors their great teams of yesteryear. The ‘Canes are being led by an alum in head coach Mario Cristobal, who has assembled a roster chalk full of South Florida high school stars like Rueben Bain Jr., Mark Fletcher Jr., and Malachi Toney. They knocked off historic rivals like Notre Dame, Florida, and Florida State en route to a successful 10-win regular season. Program legends are routinely roaming the sidelines as they’ve gone deeper into the playoffs, including Michael Irvin losing his mind as usual. Heck, even the possibility of them winning a championship in their home stadium is a throwback to them clinching three of their titles in the old Orange Bowl (RIP).

And yet, Cristobal himself has bristled at the “nostalgia theater” of people declaring Miami back, telling ESPN’s Kevin Clark earlier this season that the focus is moving the program forward. That’s certainly the right mentality to have when trying to write a new chapter in the school’s history, but that begs the question as to why the “U” was gone in the first place. College football is a constantly changing sport and we’ve seen powerhouse schools of the past like Nebraska and USC fade into irrelevance due to various circumstances. But how could an elite program located in talent-rich Miami-Dade County spend 20+ years wandering the wilderness before returning to the sport’s highest stage? Well reader, let’s unpack some of the reasons that attributed to the downfall of the Hurricanes.

1. Changing Recruiting Dynamics

Ok, let’s back up and do a history lesson here. Prior to World War II, the state of Florida was basically a frontier state with much of South Florida still undeveloped swampland and orange groves. During the American Civil War, New York Tribune founder Horace Greeley famously referred it as the “smallest tadpole in the dirty pool of secession.” Florida’s population sat at just under 1.9 million people according to the 1940 United States census, making it the least populated state in the entire south and 27th in the entire union. It’s not a surprise that both Miami and Florida’s football programs weren’t particularly remarkable at the time and Florida State University as we know it today didn’t exist, as it was still a college for women. However, the state would then experience a massive population boom in the decades following WWII, with a number factors like the GI Bill, the development of the Interstate Highway System, and the fallout of the Cuban Revolution leading millions of new residents to the Sunshine State.

By 1980, Florida’s population had skyrocketed to just under 10 million people, making it the second-most populated southern state behind Texas and No. 7 in the entire union. On the college football front, this massive uptick naturally meant an increase in local high school talent and it went hand-in-hand with every southern program desegregating by the mid-70’s. The “Big 3” of Miami, Florida, and FSU were basically sitting on top of an untapped oil reserve and in hindsight, it’s no surprise that all three exploded as dominant national powers at the same time in the 1980’s and ‘90’s.

All three of these programs were able to assemble national championship caliber rosters by keeping this talent home, hoarding as many of these top athletes as possible. The Hurricanes in particular lived off Howard Schnellenberger’s “State of Miami” recruiting philosophy, a strategy of walling off everything below the I-4 corridor for themselves. Miami coaching staffs had an inside track to several future legends like the aforementioned Irvin, but also had insight into under-the radar gems. For example, future NFL All-Pro Santana Moss was undersized and overlooked by other programs coming out of high school, but Butch Davis knew what he was capable of as an exceptional track athlete. Moss got brought into Miami as a walk-on and went on the break the program’s all-time receiving record. Examples like that allowed the “U” to build up massive amounts of talent and it culminated with the fabled 2001 Miami team having an absurd 38 future NFL Draft picks on the roster at the same time.

However, programs from around the country got hip to this talent gold mine by the 2000’s and began infiltrating South Florida. Several of these staffs made it a point to have at least one assistant with strong recruiting connections to the Sunshine State and the expansion of recruiting budgets made these trips possible. Top elite talent were no longer inclined to stay home and as Miami began to stumble, other powers like Alabama and even Ohio State became more desirable for blue-chip prospects like Amari Cooper and more recently Jeremiah Smith.

To go along with that, the emergence of secondary Florida FBS programs like UCF, USF, FAU, and crosstown FIU also affected Miami’s ability to build depth by developing less-heralded prep athletes. A talented three-star recruit could both stay close to home and have a quicker path to playing time at one of these schools instead of spending years working their way up the depth chart at the “U”. There’s a world where instead of opting to walk on at Miami, the aforementioned Moss simply goes up the road to FAU, where he would’ve been on scholarship right out the gate.

So yeah, it can be difficult for a program like Miami to adjust when all of their natural recruiting advantages are stripped away. A world where the Hurricanes can have literally dozens of future pro players on the roster is virtually impossible in this day and age and it’s not a surprise that they got dragged down to the rest of the pack as a result.

2. Lack of Institutional Investment

The undercurrent of the Hurricanes’ past success is that it won five national titles almost in spite of the university itself. The University of Miami is a private institution that historically hasn’t shown the same level of institutional commitment to athletics as its public peers like the University of Florida in Gainesville. The school famously held discussions about shutting the football program down altogether prior to Howard Schnellenberger’s arrival in 1979, and that came after they had already sidelined the men’s basketball program earlier in the decade.

Of course, the ‘Canes were able to leap to the top of the sport on the backs of local talent, lulling the school’s administrative leaders into what I like to call the “Florida Fallacy.” The Florida Fallacy is the assumption that a school can neglect providing financial and institutional support to its programs because its located in a recruiting hotbed. “Updated weight room equipment? Facility expansion projects? Sports nutrition staffs? Pfft, we don’t need to spend any money on that stuff. We just need to recruit these homegrown Miami boys and the rest will handle itself!” Every team in the state has subscribed to the Florida Fallacy at some point in time and as a USF alum, I have watched my alma mater learn this lesson the hard way over the years.

Miami also learned this lesson the hard way in the 2000’s and 2010’s as the sport experienced a facilities arms race. Oregon built a space-age football center bankrolled by Phil Knight himself. Alabama brought a cryotherapy chamber to their facility. Clemson put a dang laser tag arena in their football ops center. Miami…didn’t even have an indoor practice facility until 2018, which is nuts considering how much it rains in South Florida. It wasn’t simply enough to sell recruits on the location/history of the program when local talents like the Bosa Brothers or Jerry Jeudy could opt to leave the region entirely for programs with better amenities. Success in modern college athletics requires money and ambition from the people who write the checks and it took Hurricane leaders up until this decade to figure this out. Kirk Herbstreit’s 2021 rant on ESPN’s College Gameday sums this up perfectly:

3. Bad Coaching Hires

A program can get jammed up by simply making a bunch of bad coaching hires and only one Miami head coach was able to produce a single 10-win season between 2004 and 2023.

Larry Coker gets a bad rap for being a “substitute teacher” that piggybacked off Butch Davis’ recruits, but he did what he was supposed to do with them! He posted an insane 35-3 record through his first three seasons as the head man of the “U”, a run that included two BCS title game appearances and a win over Florida State in the 2004 Orange Bowl. Once Davis’ recruits started to filter out, however, Miami got diminishing returns for the next three years and the 2006 season was defined by the infamous FIU brawl. Coker’s out the door.

Hey! Program legend Randy Shannon is here to get this train back on the track. He understands Miami recruiting better than anyone and he’ll…post a 28-22 record over four years and get fired after losing to USF’s backup quarterback in overtime. Shannon’s out the door.

Ok, Miami now has this Al Golden dude from Temple. He’s kind of quirky with his button-down shirt and necktie look and has to weather the storm with the Nevin Shapiro scandal. But he’ll be fine. And when I mean fine, I mean post a middling 32-25 record over five seasons and get axed after getting firebombed by Clemson 58-0 for the worst loss in program history. Golden’s out the door.

Hey, former Miami quarterback Mark Richt is back after getting fired by Georgia and things are looking good in 2017! The Canes are 10-0 and the College Football Playoff committee has ranked them No. 2. The Turnover Chain has taken college football by storm. The “U” is finally ba…and they lost to Pitt to close the regular season. And then a five-touchdown loss to Clemson in their only ACC Championship Game appearance ever. And then a loss to Wisconsin in the Orange Bowl. Oh yeah, Georgia fired Richt for big-game failures like this and he’s going to retire after a 7-5 regular season in 2018. Richt’s out the door.

Alright Manny Diaz, it’s your turn. I mean, this has to work right? Your dad was literally the mayor of Miami! Another hometown guy leading the…oh, an uninspiring 21-15 record over three seasons. Diaz, you’re out the door. Bring in the big guns and poach Mario Cristobal from Oregon…

Cristobal’s tenure at Miami certainly hasn’t been perfect and the shakiness of his first two seasons were defined by a disastrous 2023 loss to Georgia Tech. But unlike his predecessors, he’s actually gotten the program on an upward trajectory. And the university has learned from its hard lessons of the past byaggressively pursuing quarterbacks like Cam Ward and Carson Beck with lucrative NIL packages while making moves to upgrade football facilities.

Time will determine if Miami’s current success will be sustained in the coming years, but the only thing people anyone should be concerned with at this exact moment is the 60-minute fight on its hands on Monday night. This “U” is here.