CHARLOTTE – Before taking the job at his alma mater late last year, Mario Cristobal spent the last four seasons in the Pacific Northwest leading Oregon’s program. It’s been much longer than that since the last time he was in the ACC as an assistant on Larry Coker’s Miami staff in the mid-2000s.
Now that’s he back in the league at the helm of the program he once coached and played for, the Hurricanes’ head man said, from his perspective as least, the outside perception of the ACC hasn’t matched the general view that the league is among the weaker of the Power Five conferences.
Cristobal pointed to Clemson as Exhibit A.
“He’s built a great program,” Cristobal said Thursday of the success Dabo Swinney has had at Clemson. “He’s certainly set a very high standard for their program and for the conference. He’s done a great job.”
Cristobal also mentioned the history of Florida State and Miami, though the two storied programs are still trying to regain their elite status after dropping off in recent years. Miami has just one 10-win season since 2003 and hasn’t won an ACC title since that year, and FSU, the only other ACC program to make a CFP appearance, has averaged just 5.2 wins a season over the last five.
Cristobal noted Wake Forest’s success over the last couple of seasons, including achieving its highest Associated Press ranking last fall (No. 10), as well as Pittsburgh winning its first-ever Coastal Division title a season ago. The “hard-nosed toughness and discipline” of teams like Boston College hasn’t gone unnoticed either, he said.
“I could go on and on about the teams,” Cristobal said. “We’ve always felt that the ACC is a very strong conference, and it’s our job as coaches to continue to elevate the standards for the conference.”
But he again pointed to Clemson, which has won six of the last seven ACC championships, as the league’s clear standard bearer, a program he’s seen up close twice on the sport’s biggest stage. Cristobal was Nick Saban’s offensive line coach and run-game coordinator when Alabama faced the Tigers in the 2016 and 2017 national championship games. The Crimson Tide won a five-point game the first time around before Clemson exacted its revenge with a win in the rematch, its first of two CFP titles in a three-year span.
“ If not for a couple of spectacular special teams plays (in the 2016 title game), who knows how that could’ve gone, right?” Cristobal said. “A surprise onside kick and a kickoff return for a touchdown. It’s a game-changer. And then a year later, a very tight game as well that went down to the wire and Clemson won.”
Cristobal and his Hurricanes will see Clemson again this fall when Miami travels to Memorial Stadium on Nov. 19.
Photo credit: Jim Dedmon/USA Today Sports
