Super Mario and The Cheetah: How they will save Hurricanes, Dolphins and football in Miami | Opinion
The mind reels back to that photograph that said it all: Miami owned football for a minute, therefore Miami owned sports in America.. Can it really be almost 40 years ago!?
It was the cover of Sports Illustrated, 1984 preseason football edition. The Hurricanes were coming off their first national championship, and the Dolphins had drafted a quarterback who electrified as a rookie and was about to shatter NFL passing records.
Bernie Kosar and Dan Marino, side by side, so young, with full heads of curly hair and neon smiles.
“A PAIR OF ACES,” the headline read.
Can it have been that long ago when the twin pillars of Miami football together were that big? Owned South Florida so magnetically and mattered that way nationally?
Or maybe the last vestige of that shared relevance was around 2001, when the Canes were headed to what would be their fifth and last national title and the Fins to a fifth consecutive playoff season before a long decline.
It has been more than 20 years. A generation in South Florida has grown up never having experienced the Dolphins or Hurricanes at their best. This is a football town. Never mistake that. When the Miami Heat came and took it, it wasn’t just that LeBron James joined forces with Dwyane Wade. It was because there was an opening, a void created by the market’s two football powers abdicating the throne.
They are here to take it back.
The 2022 football season arrives ceremonially this week as Dolphins rookies report and hit the field preceding full training camp, and the Canes are up at the ACC Football Kickoff as the college season revs engines.
The season doesn’t kick off until September 3 (UM) and September 11 (Fins), but football is back(ish) this week to herald a season in which both of Miami’s big teams are supposed to matter again. Finally. New head coaches. New stars. New hopes. New attention. And new pressure — the sweet burden of relevance.
Bravado reverberates in the names of Mario Cristobal and Tyreek Hill.
Swagger is back.
The Canes haven’t had it since ballsy Jimmy Johnson. The Fins had it with Marino and maybe not since but for that blur in time when Ricky Williams was a bull unstoppable.
Super Mario and the Canes
Cristobal won two rings in Coral Gables as a player. The U has tried before to hope somebody from the family would return to heroically resurrect the magic. So why is this different?
Cristobal left a big program, Oregon, for his dream job, the one he had been so close to (at least in miles) with FIU. He arrived with a track record and full of Cuban machismo. He was home at last. He has hit recruiting, the transfer portal and the NIL game in full stride. The program is simmering, ready to boil.
He begins his first season as college football is in tumult all around him, conferences blowing up, realignment changing everything. The ACC is together. For now. But Clemson, Miami and Florida State are speculated as the marquee ACC teams that could be ripe for joining the SEC in a budding superconference.
Those machinations will take care of themselves. All Super Mario has to do is win. To shake off the 7-5 season just past, win the Coastal in the ACC’s last year of division play and then find a way to beat big brother Clemson and reign in the ACC.
The Canes have a star quarterback in Tyler Van Dyke, who had about as great a season last year as any Cane ever and looms as a top-10 NFL draft pick. UM is ranked ninth nationally in ESPN’s Football Power Index and given an 8.9 percent chance of making the pre-expansion College Football Playoff.
In Mario We Trust will be the mantra of starved Canes fans ... until it isn’t. The honeymoon has begun. It better be fierce.
UM hasn’t had a football coach last longer than six seasons since Andy Gustafson left in 1963. Cristobal should. This job is his end game. He is the man to bring UM’s long-elusive sixth national championship.
THE CHEETAH AND THE FINS
On the pro side of Miami there is a personable new head coach in Mike McDaniel and new tackle in Terron Armstead was the big prize in free agency. There is a retooled running games and top defensive stars such as Xavien Howard, an ascending Christian Wilkins and rising star Jevon Holland.
But this is all about The Cheetah, the nickname Tyreek Hill gave himself in case you didn’t know he was fast.
Miami gave up a ton in draft picks to pry Patrick Mahomes’ favorite target from Kansas City.
Hill gives the Dolphins a national star, a game-breaking deep threat.
He gives them more than that.
He gives them the key to unlocking quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. Or so they say and so they pray.
Hill is the all-in, no-more-excuses, last-chance shot for Tagovailoa to prove himself in his third season, or be gone. If Tua cannot succeed, thrive, with this improved surrounding cast led by Hill, picture the QB descending one of those water-tube slides with no brakes, dumped into the ocean while the Dolphins pursue his replacement next draft.
Fix Tua is The Cheetah’s job, nothing less. Can he?
Skyscraper hopes in Miami are not a consensus nationally.
ESPN’s future ranking of NFL teams the next three seasons, out Wednesday, had the Dolphins 22nd, last in the AFC East, one slot behind (oh the indignity) the Jets.
Consecutive winning seasons have not convinced the NFL that Miami is ready to play with the mighty Buffalo Bills. Soon enough we see if The Cheetah can change that.
It’s time.
More than 20 years since the Canes’ last national championship.
More than 20 years since the Dolphins’ last had consecutive playoff seasons.
It’s time. (Isn’t it?).
Mario Cristobal and Tyreek Hill have brought swagger with them, brought hype and hope. They have raised expectations, made their teams a talking-point nationally and amped-up anticipation to new levels in Miami.
That’s a lot.
It’s also the easy part.
