Hurricanes’ tight ends coach applies principles from time in Army in his coaching
In between his stints playing college football for Army and beginning a coaching career that has spanned more than a decade at this point — all at his alma mater before joining the Miami Hurricanes this offseason — Mike Viti served in combat.
Most notably, he was deployed as a platoon leader in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom from 2010-2011. He earned a Bronze Star and a Combat Action Badge.
“I was in the Taliban stronghold,” Viti, now the tight ends coach at Miami, said Thursday. “For me, it was the most honorable year in my life. To serve with America’s best, to take care of people who can’t necessarily protect themselves, was a great responsibility, and that’s really where I felt everything in my life, whether it was through classical academic settings, military vignettes and certainly sport, which I think is the ultimate proving ground for leadership, regardless of the industry, it all came to fruition. And you know, as a 23, 24-year-old, life gets real really fast, and you realize the importance of preparation. You realize the importance of decision-making, emotional control, leadership. All those things come to life every single moment, every day.”
“That man’s a war hero,” Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal said. “I mean, he’s done things that none of us could ever even fathom. Indebted to him for his service.”
Viti, 40, takes the mindset and principles he learned while serving and applies them into his job as a coach.
He spent the past decade at his alma mater, first serving as Army’s fullbacks coach from 2016-2021 before becoming the Black Knights’ offensive line coach from 2022-2025. He was the school’s director of high school and alumni relations in 2015, named the American Football Coaches Association’s Assistant Coach of the Year in 2019 and awarded the Football Writers Association of America’s Armed Forces Merit Award, which is presented annually to honor an individual and/or group with a military background that has an impact within the realm of college football, during that 2019 season.
Now, he is working at Miami, where he is replacing Cody Woodiel, who left for Ole Miss, on Cristobal’s staff. Viti said the excitement of what’s happening with the Hurricanes, who reached the College Football Playoff National Championship Game last season, made the opportunity to come to Coral Gables an enticing one.
“You look at Miami, and I would argue that nobody’s doing it at a higher level right now,” Viti said. “You look at a leader like coach Cristobal, who’s coaching at his alma mater, and to me that was intriguing. And you come down here and you can feel it. You can feel that the frontier of college football lives here. And that’s hard not to say yes to, it’s hard not to be attracted to. So I would make the argument just the leaving part wasn’t so hard, but it was the excitement of what’s next and what you can accomplish.”
As for how serving in the military prepared Viti for being a coach?
“Service is leading,” Viti said. “It’s servant-minded business, but it’s technical skill acquisition and implementation, and really the parallels to football and being an officer and coaching and being an elite teacher are all pretty similar, and I found that just to be true through my time at Army. And certainly here, it’s learning a new system, it’s cultural, it’s the silver accord amongst all of us, and how to connect people and emotionally drive them and move them. So I think there’s a lot of really good things to pull from there, but I would argue that every really, really good coach would make a really, really good officer, and vice versa. So I found that just to be true through my time as a coach and certainly as an officer.”
And Viti is excited about the challenge ahead. He is coaching the position group on Miami’s roster that has “maybe the most room to grow on the entire team,” Viti said.
“I’m excited about that,” Viti said.
Elija Lofton, heading into his junior year, is the only player with significant experience in the room. He played in 28 games over the past two seasons and has 32 catches for 368 yards and four touchdowns. Injuries limited him as a sophomore last season when he was supposed to become Miami’s primary tight end after being used in select packages as a freshman.
Behind Lofton are rising sophomore Luka Gilbert, redshirt junior Jackson Carver and freshmen Israel Briggs and Gavin Mueller.
“I love the ceiling of the room,” Viti said. “I love the development side of it. To me, that’s where I feel I’m talented. But I look at the guys. They’re just as hungry. ... We’re starting this journey together.”
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