Miami Hurricanes loss to Rutgers ends Cristobal’s Year 2 on downer as UM bowl woes continue | Opinion

This was a third-tier college football bowl game sponsored by a lawn mower and played in a less-than-full baseball stadium between two unranked teams.. No matter. “It just feels big,” as Miami Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal had said this week. “It feels New York-ish.” It doesn’t get more New York-ish than Yankee Stadium, where a Canes team depleted by the transfer portal and opt-outs for the NFL Draft fell to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, 31-24, in Thursday’s Pinstripe Bowl.

It doesn’t get more New York-ish than when your team’s bowl experience included a tour of Times Square, a Rangers hockey game, visiting Radio City Music Hall and the 9/11 Memorial, ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, and seeing the Empire State Building lit up in both teams’ colors. But it felt big to Cristobal for more reasons than just the host city.

And if that means this would have been a big win, doesn’t that in turn mean it’s a big loss? Miami entered the game having lost four consecutive bowls and 10 of the past 11 dating to 2008, the lone postseason win in 2016. And the bowl slump goes on. “We haven’t won a bowl game in a minute. I don’t know when that was, but it’s been a minute,” as Canes offensive lineman Jalen Rivers had put it. (Actually, it has been roughly 3.68 million minutes.) “It’s important to just change that trajectory of us not winning bowl games. This will be an important step in the right direction leading into next year.” Winning to end on a high note and carrying that into 2024 was another reason this game felt big.

More personally, it was important for Cristobal, whose less-than-sterling first two seasons leading UM have resulted in a 12-13 record, including Thursday’s loss leaving this season 7-6. He is 6-10 in Atlantic Coast Conference games and 1-5 against ranked opponents.

The bowl loss encourages the predictable social-media outcry from Cristobal detractors who had the funny memes roaring online by the final whistle. Theme: You lose to … RUTGERS!?!? As if it’s a major shock or cause for outrage that a 6-6 team beats a 7-5 team missing its starting quarterback and at least six other key starters.

Rational hopes that Cristobal can turn the program around and reignite new glory days are rooted in consecutive top-six national recruiting classes, with the ‘24 class rated No. 1 in the ACC. A bowl win would have been the cherry on that, another sign of progress, if mostly symbolically. Especially because losing to 6-6 Rutgers, of all teams, is special ignominy, since it symbolizes how far UM has fallen from the program that won five national championships, the last in 2001.

UM before this was 11-0 vs. Rutgers by an outrageous average margin of 46-10. All 11 meetings were from 1993 to 2003 when both played in the Big East and UM was ranked seven times. The asterisk to this result is that Miami’s roster much more than Rutgers’ was depleted by departures via the transfer portal, including that of starting quarterback Tyler Van Dyke, running back Don Chaney Jr., two offensive line starters and at least three other .