Mario Cristobal will get credit now for a nearly heroic sense of loyalty, for sacrificing financially and staying home in a decision based on heart. It makes a nice feel-good story. There are even grains of truth to it.

Don’t doubt it, though: When you say Cristobal is staying as Florida International University football coach, the statement begs the addendum “for now.” Seldom has the word “staying’’ felt so fragile, so impermanent.

This time it was Rutgers.

In December it was Pitt.

Who’ll be next?

A man is not allowed to claim he is loyal to his wife at the same times he’s going out on blind dates.

By being receptive to overtures from other schools Cristobal has volunteered himself as a man willing to listen, willing to leave if the situation is right. Two bowl seasons in a row at FIU have hoisted this 41-year-old into the “hot young coach” category that gets you on a lot of other schools’ short lists — especially when you have all but advertised a willingness to be wooed.

For now FIU has dodged a bullet, that’s all. Or a bomb, given the timing.

Wednesday is National Signing Day, and you can bet more than two dozen FIU recruits who have given oral commitments were anxiously reconsidering early Monday as reports out of New Jersey indicated Cristobal had accepted Rutgers’ offer and only details remained to be worked out.

The word out of FIU later was that Cristobal simply decided to withdraw from consideration and remain with the team he has coached the past five seasons. But what if it was Rutgers that changed its mind? What if Cristobal’s agent and that school simply couldn’t work out a deal?

We cannot be sure exactly why what was reported early Monday was sort of un-reported late in the day. Maybe Cristobal could not stand the backlash he would get for bolting on the eve of signing day.

We cannot be sure how the dalliance with Rutgers will linger to impact FIU’s Wednesday bounty, either.

We can be sure that Cristobal’s interest in the job in the first place is what nearly detonated FIU’s National Signing Day, and what makes us hesitate to place much nobility on the coach’s decision (if it indeed was his) to stay.

Recruiting ploy

Rival coaches recruiting against FIU will use Cristobal’s apparent interest in a better job as surely as coaches recruiting against UM have floated ominous, made-up speculation about forthcoming NCAA penalties.

An underlying point in all this is that you can never quite trust a coach. That is our lesson of the day. It is hard to learn or remember that because our nature is to assume loyalty and truth until the moment those are betrayed.

Never trust a coach who says this is his dream job, like Urban Meyer did at Florida, because his is an occupation of steppingstones, of bigger dreams always out there.

Never trust a coach who says he is “not going anywhere,” like Nick Saban did with the Dolphins before becoming Alabama’s coach, because one phone call, one enticing offer, can change all that fast.

We want to believe Mario Cristobal is different, the exception, but that blind faith on our part felt a lot like naiveté early Monday. And still does to a degree even as he stays (for now).

I’m not picking on Mario here. It’s in the coaching blood.