EUGENE -- It was while he sat in a Hatfield-Dowlin Complex office that Carlos Huerta noticed something different about his friend.
Huerta has known Mario Cristobal since high school in Miami. They lived, played and won national championships together down the street with the hometown Hurricanes, and Huerta was a groomsman in Cristobal's wedding.
When Huerta visited his friend in the days before Oregon's victory against Nebraska in September, it had been nine months since Cristobal pulled out a map and showed his mother, who still lives in Miami, Oregon's location. Like any mother would think, she felt it was awfully far away from home.