Mario Cristobal announced on Monday that Miami added a “time management coach” to handle end-of-game management during the 2024 college football season. This decision comes after the Hurricanes committed one of the most embarrassing blunders of all-time last fall.
However, Cristobal would not say who the new (or old?) coach is and winked.
Miami was winning by three points against Georgia Tech last season. It had the ball with 42 seconds left. The Yellow Jackets did not have any timeouts remaining.
All Cristoball needed to do was take a knee. But… he ran the ball instead.
Running back Donald Chaney Jr. fumbled. The visitors recovered. They quickly drove down the field to win the game in walk-off fashion.
To make matters worse, Cristobal threw a player under the bus and admitted that his team should have just kneeled out the clock to win during his postgame press conference. Uh, ya think?
If that singular moment wasn’t bad enough, the 53-year-old head coach has a horrible history with clock management. He committed a very similar error at Oregon in 2018. The Hurricanes also ran the ball on multiple occasions last season when a singular kneel down or a pair of kneel downs would’ve won the game. They didn’t fumble during the first four weeks of the year so it wasn’t a big deal— until they did.
Mario Cristobal proved, time and time again, that he has no idea what to do when the game is out of reach and there is still time on the clock. His brain simply cannot comprehend.
In an effort to prevent disaster from striking twice, Miami put someone else in charge.
At the end of the day, no matter how embarrassing it might be for Cristobal to need someone else to remind him how to handle the clock, this is a step in the right direction. Whatever it takes to win!