As Miami hosts UF, things couldn’t be more different for Mario Cristobal, Billy Napier

The Miami Hurricanes’ Mario Cristobal and Florida Gators’ Billy Napier were both hired ahead of the 2022 season with the hopes of elevating their respective teams to relevance.

My, how different things look in Year 4 at both schools.

After a slow start to his tenure, Cristobal has the Hurricanes as the No. 4 team in the country and looking like a legitimate College Football Playoff threat.

Napier, meanwhile, is barely hanging on.

These two teams on diverging paths will meet Saturday when the No. 4 Hurricanes (3-0) host the Gators (1-2) at Hard Rock Stadium, with kickoff set for 7:30 p.m. and the game broadcast on ABC.

While Miami enters Saturday as the clear favorite, Cristobal has made sure that his Hurricanes aren’t overlooking the Gators.

“The part that has to be respected most is their talent level, their coaching, their size, speed, physicality,” Cristobal said. “Schematically, they’re very challenging in a lot of different ways. They’ve been playing elite defense for several games, dating back to last season. And offensively, they’ve been very close on several occasions to having some great performances. So it’s very clear. They’re an extremely talented team. They’re well coached. They play hard. And for us, it’s a great opportunity.”

Where things have gone right for Miami

Cristobal instilling that mind set and maximizing the talent he has at his disposal have been integral in Miami’s recent success.

The Hurricanes have been on a steady ascent over the past four years. They have gone from 5-7 to 7-6 to 10-3 in his first three full seasons and are off to a 3-0 start this year with a pair of ranked wins over then-No. 6 Notre Dame and then-No. 18 USF.

And the team is built the way Cristobal wants it to be built. Miami is strong in the trenches, with success coming from the line of scrimmage out. The Hurricanes continue to recruit well both at the high school level and through the transfer portal to clean up loose ends.

“I think that Mario has created this football program now, in Year 4, really in his image from the inside out,” Hurricanes athletic director Dan Radakovich said at the start of the season. “I think it’s all coming together right now. ... We have a great opportunity in front of us and the horses to be able to do that.”

It’s what Cristobal wanted to accomplish when taking over for his alma mater. UM hasn’t won a national championship since 2001 and have spent most of the ensuing two-plus decades toiling in college football mediocrity.

There’s still plenty of room to grow — Miami still hasn’t won an Atlantic Coast Conference title and needs to make the playoff — but Miami is once again pushing to be considered among college football’s elite.

“We are being recognized for the progress of our program, but for us, it means we still have a long way to go,” Cristobal said ahead of the season. “We have been busting our asses to get Miami to where it needs to be, and the progress is not going to stop.”

Where things have gone wrong for Florida

When Napier arrived at Florida in December 2021, he knew why he was there.

Athletic director Scott Stricklin and many of the other stakeholders in the Gators program were tired of former coach Dan Mullen’s careless nature — embodied by a playoff-preventing shoe-toss — despite reaching a New Year’s Six bowl in three of his four seasons.

So, as Stricklin shuttled Mullen out, he championed Napier as someone who would shape a culture and hone in on the details.

“We have an opportunity here to get someone who can really focus,” Stricklin said at the time. Napier emphasized a similar sentiment in his opening press conference: “We’re going to start with the things that we totally control. … We’ll be disciplined. And we will eliminate careless play — turnovers, penalties, mental errors.”

However, since Napier’s first season in 2022, his teams have struggled with discipline, ranking below 100th nationally in penalties per game all but one year, including a grisly nine per game this season which ranks 125th in the country.

The face of that issue is defensive tackle Brendan Bett’s “Bull Spit” incident, sparking South Florida’s game-winning drive by hawking one into an opponent’s face. But the problem is widespread. Penalties in losses to USF and No. 3 LSU vaporized three Gators’ touchdowns. The Hurricanes’ defense, which has allowed 13 points per game this season, won’t be more relenting.

Consequently, Napier enters Miami Gardens holding the worst winning percentage of any Florida coach through three years at 20-21; both Mullen and Jim McElwain were fired with winning records.

His path gets no easier. Seven of Florida’s remaining foes are ranked in the top 15 of this week’s AP Poll. So Miami, in some ways, is just another drop in the bucket.

But with a bye next week, and Napier only holding one winning record in three seasons, a comparison in the national spotlight with Cristobal’s rapidly improving program will be stark for Florida.

“We need to find a way to play with more consistency,” Napier said about the primetime matchup, emphasizing a focus on the same reason he first arrived at Florida. “If the student struggles on the test, as a teacher, you need to take a good look in the mirror.”

It might just be that Napier will see the door.