Cote: No. 4 Hurricanes top Gators, flex title potential as FSU awaits | Opinion
Year 4 of the Mario Cristobal era arrived with it seeming clear that a place in the 12-team College Football Playoff would be a must and define if this season were a success.
Nothing less would satisfy. Now, it’s beginning to seem only something more will.
Time to start raising that bar? The Miami Hurricanes’ now 4-0 record and No. 4 national ranking is doing the lifting.
The Canes I’ve seen the first third of this season — most recently in Saturday night’s 26-7 victory over the old-rival Florida Gators at a rainy, sold-out Hard Rock Stadium — is the best all-round UM team since the glory days, the championship era. This team will make the playoffs, and with a huge chance to do major damage in them.
This team (yes, I’m saying it) could win UM’s long-elusive sixth national title, the first since 2001.
The two-time Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers happened to be at Hard Rock for a pregame bow. Might the Canes be up next for a title celebration?
“These guys are obviously fired up,” Cristobal said, emerging from a racuous lockerroom. “Our guys kept their composure when we were getting in a rut, and the defense played well all night. I like our progress.”
Miami’s triumph got a bit too close late in the second half at 13-7, until UM scored the insurance touchdown on Marty Brown’s 1-yard leap over the goalline with 4:08 left to make it 19-7. The Gators never seemed in it in the first half with six straight punts and 24 total yards under the thumb of the Canes’ defense. Florida avoided its first shutout 1988, longest such streak in the nation, and rallied after halftime. But UM limited the Gators to their fewest offensive yards in a game (151) since 2013.
Given a short field, the Canes finished the scoring with 1:56 left on Mark Fletcher’s 1-yard run.
The manner of the Hurricanes’ victory proved they can beat a desperate SEC team, a big rival, with defense first and a solid ground game — even when Heisman candidate QB Carson Beck is not his best or wowing voters.
The win rode the strength of tandem backs Fletcher and Brown. It was as if Cristobal directed his offensive line to go win the game.
“We tell them that every day of their life,” said the coach, smiling.
This was the kind of game Miami lost in the recent past. A lead whittled, momentum lost. Not this time. Not this team.
“Our O-line phsyically imposed their will,” Beck said. “Nothing is ever gonna go your way every single night. It’s rainy, it’s wet, it’s a physical ballgame. We faced our first adversity of the season and showed what we’re made of.”
Cristobal saluted the huge crowd.
“We asked for an asylum. They gave us that,” he said.
I am spouting this glory upon UM’s first four games even as Miami now prepares for its next huge in two weeks at also-unbeaten, No. 7-ranked rival Florida State. It’s fitting there is a week off first. Thet matchup needs time to marinate, to be savored, to grow even bigger in the mind.
This is the 35th year Miami, Florida and Florida State all face each other the same season. Might not happen again for several years, with no future games set between UM and Florida. So the Canes might win the “state championship,” for what it’s worth.
“The state championship is always going to be one of the highest goals we have,” Cristobal said. “These guys play against each other. The fan bases, alumni bases, they’re at it all offseason. There’s deep meaning to it.”
There is a bigger prize in view now, of course: Miami’s first ACC championship.
And there is the grand prize left and shining plausible. It sits at the mountaintop of the playoffs — in a championship game that would be a home game at Hard Rock if Miami can climb that high.
Yes, I am getting ahead of everything. Head coaches are not permitted to. Fans are allowed. When your team is special good, you know it. You feel it. When your team is special good, it isn’t the pressure or the stakes that will beat it.
Miami introduced this season and the height of its own hopes by beating a higher-ranked, favored Notre Dame, and has done nothing since to diminish a fan’s enthusiasm.
I’m impressed with this latest victory because it underlines the balance — between offense and defense, between pass and run — that last year’s team did not have and that champions almost always do.
Florida’s offensive struggles courtesy Miami’s D would come clear on its game-opening possession: Three plays, all for losses, and a punt. Miami followed with an efficient scoring drive ended by Brown’s 2-yard run for a fast 7-0 lead.
Another Gators punt and another Canes score followed. UM held the ball for 16 plays across 8 minutes 19 seconds but settled for a 53-yard field goal and 10-0 cushion in the first minute of the second quarter. Canes would add a short field goal for a 13-0 lead at the break (because Florida’s defense is pretty good, too.)
UM’s Brown had a 48-yard scoring run negated in the third quarter when officials ruled his foward progress had been stopped. Calls don’t get much worse, as replays affirmed.
The break sparked Florida. They drove into Miami territory for the first time all night and ended an 80-yard drive with Jadan Baugh’s 5-yard TD run and a comfy UM lead became 13-7.
A Beck interception followed immediately. Suddenly the fans in blue were the loud ones. But Miami would take over when a fourth-down Gators completion from the UM 34 was inches short. Then two late Canes TDs made the final score.
While Cristobal should feel good about his team as it enters its bye week, Florida coach Billy Napier after Saturday’s beating is 1-3 this season, 20-22 overall and 0-11 on the road against ranked teams. The heat around him is spiking. Napier fighting for his job in Gainesville right now is as real as around here with Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel. Maybe more so.
Napier had said entering this game, “We’re close to being pretty dangerous, in my opinion.”
No, you’re closer to being fired, in my opinion.
(”Don’t think about it,” McDaniel might advise.)
ESPN’s College GameDay was on campus before the game. Everybody predicted a UM win. Pat McAfee made his pick at the pool from atop a 10-meter high dive board ... because he abhors attention. Millions watched on ABC, less those boycotting the network over the Jimmy Kimmel mess. Canes great Michael Irvin cranked the pregame siren. In front of the pressbox, hanging from the upper deck was a rubber gator on a rope wearing a UF sweater, its mouth taped as tightly shut as Florida’s offense was for most of the night.
So the unbeaten Canes passed their latest big test Saturday night. Now the next is in two weeks in Tallahassee.
Some victories are hugely impressive, others less so, but wins are wins. And in college football the team that climbs the mountain highest is not the one that climbs the fastest, but the one that slips the least.
As Cristobal left his postgame press conference around midnight I told him, “Take the rest of the night off.” He chuckled. Knew I was kidding.
He was headed to greet the many dozens of recruits who’d attended the game.
Good bet they were impressed by what they’d seen.
This story was originally published September 20, 2025 at 11:14 PM.
