Pat Riley’s message to Cristobal, and UM/ACC/Notre Dame fallout
A six-pack of Miami Hurricanes notes on a Thursday, as we inch closer toward UM’s Dec. 20 playoff game at Texas A&M (noon, ABC, ESPN):
▪ Player conditioning has been among numerous areas that have improved during Mario Cristobal’s four seasons as Canes coach.
And Cristobal this week cited Heat president Pat Riley as a key person who cemented the importance of that to him.
“One of the best days I’ve ever had since coming back was a brief meeting and opportunity with Coach Riley,” Cristobal told WQAM’s Joe Zagacki and Don Bailey Jr. on his radio show this week.
“I’m an old-school Laker fan. If [there was] anything he can drive through to me — and they have the best culture in all of basketball — was make sure your team is always in elite shape. You can never allow fatigue to take over.”
Message received.
“That was a big part of last week as well as technique and fundamentals,” Cristobal said of UM’s idle week before conference championship games. “This week, we transition back to two weeks worth of game [preparation] week. You are making sure next week’s practices aren’t a spike to your body. We improved those levels last week.”
▪ Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner Jim Phillips said Wednesday that the ACC will evaluate the league’s tiebreaker policy and might incorporate College Football Playoff rankings into that policy.
The Canes (10-2) and Blue Devils (8-5) were among five teams that finished tied for second in the ACC at 6-2 — behind 7-1 Virginia. Duke qualified for the conference championship game because of the fifth tiebreaker: conference opponent win percentage.
The Blue Devils beat Virginia but were bypassed for a playoff berth; Sun Belt champion Tulane and American Athletic champion James Madison were rated ahead of Duke by the CFP and thus received playoff bids instead.
The ACC approved those tiebreakers in 2024, and Phillips said nobody objected at the time.
“Who knew that we would get to the seventh tiebreaker with five teams that were 6-2? The stars aligned in a way that nobody predicted,” Phillips said from the SBJ Intercollegiate Athletics Forum.
“Nobody should throw shade on Duke. They earned the right. Everybody had a chance to be part of that tiebreaker, and they played great. They won the league. They held the trophy. So I was super happy for Duke. It worked out the way it was supposed to work out relative to that’s the tiebreaker we put in place, but we’ll come back together. It would be smart of us to now also have a CFP maybe component in there, in the tiebreaker.”
In a phone interview last week, UM athletic director Dan Radakovich said the ACC needs to consider changing the tiebreaker procedures to guarantee that the ACC “puts its best foot forward” in the conference championship game.
Phillips said he supports expanding the CFP field, something that will be discussed in the weeks ahead. The SEC would like a 16-team field, while the Big 10 has advocated for a 24-team field.
ESPN granted CFP leaders an extension until Jan. 23 to finalize a decision.
Any changes could be made in time for next season or be delayed until 2027. “I would prefer not to wait a year,” Phillips said.
▪ If you missed it, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua criticized the ACC for “attacking” the Irish with social media posts noting Miami’s win against Notre Dame.
But while Bevacqua said Notre Dame’s relationship with the ACC has been “permanently damaged,” he made a point to add that he did not blame Miami for lobbying for a playoff berth or citing its win against the Irish.
Bevacqua said he was annoyed by ACC social media posts that compared UM’s body of work with Notre Dame’s, casting the Canes in a favorable light. Then he was disturbed when the ACC cited UM’s win against Notre Dame in a post on X.
“Quite frankly, I was kind of expecting a phone call saying, ‘Hey, sorry about that, it won’t happen again,’” Bevacqua said in a news conference on Tuesday. “But then it did happen again, and we started to communicate with the ACC, texts that I sent, emails that I sent, and it continued to happen.
“We were definitely being targeted. And for better or for worse, we have a different relationship with the ACC than any other team in college football, other than the [football] teams that are in the ACC.
“Because we’re in the ACC for 24 sports, we have a scheduling agreement with the ACC. The ACC does wonderful things for Notre Dame, but we bring tremendous football value to the ACC, and we didn’t understand why you would go out of your way to try to damage us in this process.”
▪ UM offensive tackle Jackson Cantwell, the jewel of the Canes’ top 10-ranked 2026 recruiting class, was named Gatorade Player of the Year — a rarity for an offensive lineman.
Cantwell anchored 13-0 Nixa High School’s (Missouri) offensive line. He had 173 pancake blocks for a Nixa team that averaged 45.8 points per game and more than 9 yards per play.
▪ Miami finished sixth in scoring defense at 13.8 points permitted per game. Texas A&M is 41st at 21.9. This will be the best defense, statistically, that the Aggies will play this year.
▪ ESPN assigned its No. 2 college announcing team, Sean McDonough and Greg McElroy, to UM-Texas A&M. The lead team, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit, were assigned to Alabama-Oklahoma the night before.
Here’s my Wednesday piece on Ray Ray Joseph’s departure.
Here’s my Tuesday piece with lots of UM notes.
This story was originally published December 11, 2025 at 12:54 PM.
