CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- In the middle of the toughest professional decision of his life, Mario Cristobal dialed a familiar phone number.
Over 3,000 miles from Eugene, Oregon, in Stuart, Florida, Dennis Lavelle picked up. Cristobal wanted to know what his former high school coach at Christopher Columbus High thought of the move that, at that point, Lavelle had only heard rumors about: Cristobal's potential return to Miami as the Hurricanes' new head coach.
"You're 51 years old now," Lavelle told Cristobal. "And you got a chance to go home. ... You got to go.