365 days ago, former Oregon Ducks head coach Mario Cristobal announced that he would be leaving Eugene and taking over as the new head coach for the Miami Hurricanes, his alma mater.
What a wild 365 days it’s been.
On December 6th, Oregon fans got the dreaded news that they had seen coming for a couple of days. It was an overcast and cold Monday morning in Eugene. The Ducks had just gotten back from their disastrous trip to Las Vegas a couple of days earlier, where they lost to the Utah Utes in the Pac-12 Championship game, 38-10. Rumors of Cristobal leaving the Ducks had started to swirl in the hours before the game on Friday afternoon, and distractions certainly didn’t help Oregon perform.
So it didn’t exactly come as a shock when, at 8:27 AM in Eugene, the news broke that Cristobal officially accepted the position in Coral Gables.
Do you think Cristobal regrets the decision? He would never admit it publicly, or maybe even privately, but after all that has transpired during his short time at Miami, and all of the hardships he has gone through, is there any part of him that wonders what would have happened had he stayed at Oregon?
It’s fair to wonder, for certain.
To celebrate this anniversary, we wanted to take a look back at the last year and mark some important dates and milestones along the way. Here is the year-in-review for Cristobal and the Hurricanes: