On Monday morning, as the University of Miami announced Manny Diaz’s firing, their new football coach, Mario Cristobal, stood on the opposite coast telling Oregon players he was going home.
That’s the way to frame this, too. A big, bold and, yes, often awkward — awkwardly choreographed, awkwardly executed — plan by the school’s new, deep-pocketed power structure put Miami back on the college-football map in a manner its play hasn’t in years.
Miami didn’t just come at Cristobal with the idea of home, though. That lure was a given for the Cuban-American kid still in him at 51.