COACH… On talent evaluation

Miami head coach Mario Cristobal returned to alma mater with a sterling reputation as a college football recruiter. Going into his fourth season in Coral Gables, his reputation as an elite recruiter has only grown with multiple top ten classes.

Recently, coach Cristobal shared his thoughts on the challenges of modern day college recruiting, specifically talent evaluation.

Cristobal’s staff just returned from two bye weeks on the recruiting trail. That makes for another challenge during an already hectic regular season.

“We invest a lot in being around our guys (prospects) and at the same time, getting to the places we got and have to get to not only recruit, but to evaluate,” said Cristobal. “You want to see these guys that you're recruiting and how are they performing? How are they responding to competitive situations? How do they play against really good competition? How do they play deep into the season when they're in a favorable position for the postseason or whether they're not? You want to see their competitive character. There's really no balance. You just go. Your bye weeks are just as busy, if not maybe a little bit busier minus a Saturday than a regular in-season week.”

“You'd like to space it out more, almost like a quarter system, but it is what it is," said Cristobal. "You're only allowed 33 evals, which means you count the staff and you send out 10 staff guys on a Wednesday, that's 10 of your 33. So you have to be very strategic. You have to cover a lot of ground and we did. It's just a balance of making sure that you don't miss any part of our players' development because we invest a lot in development.”

On Miami’s progress with evaluations…

"We're getting better so it's probably a little bit harder to play at Miami than it was a few years ago and hopefully more and more good players want to come here so the competition gets better," Cristobal said. "Because the one thing that we are seeing is that competition is bringing out the best in our guys. That's the only way to fulfill our promise to them to make them the best than they can be so we're going to stay along those lines.”

GO CANES!