As much as Mario Cristobal might seem settled at his Miami Hurricanes job, there was a time he almost hated what it entailed. Fresh off being cut as an undrafted free agent from the NFL, he was one night’s sleep away from trading football for a career in the Secret Service. However, appearing on Adam Breneman’s show, Cristobal revealed exactly what led him to choose a grueling, $1/hour graduate assistant role over the stability of a federal agent badge.

“After a couple years in the NFL Europe, after getting cut as an undrafted free agent, your head’s spinning, man. ‘What am I going to do?’ And I’m like I’m going to be a Secret Service agent,” he said on the Next Up with Adam Breneman business show. “Just focus on doing that. And my good friend, my brother’s roommate, Rob Chudzinski, kept calling me up, ‘Man, you got to try this football thing’.

“And I said, ‘Look, I’m not going to go be a Graduate Assistant.’ Those guys make coffee, do dry cleaning. I’m not doing that cr-p. And he’s like, ‘Try it.’ I came over, interviewed, got the job. But I made it really clear like, ‘Look, I’m two years in the process for being in the Secret Service. So, if I do get the call, I’m gone. I’m on a fishing boat for, I think, the Gator Bowl with guys like Reggie Wayne, Santana Moss, Ed Reed, those guys are freshman. And I got the pager.”

“I got the job and I accepted, and cried like a baby. Packed my stuff from this very facility. Went home, went to bed to join the next day and then I woke up in a panic. I said, ‘No way, man. I want to coach football.’ And pulled a reverse 180 and they gave me my GA job back which pays about a dollar an hour. The rest was super fortunate.”

Mario Cristobal finished his playing career at Miami after two national championships in 1989 and 1991. But the NFL was a different challenge. He went undrafted in 1993, signed with the Denver Broncos as a UDFA, and was cut during training camp. He later spent two seasons with the Amsterdam Admirals in NFL Europe, but his playing career wasn’t going where he had hoped. It was almost like he was forced to give up.

But like they say, all’s well that ends well.

Currently headed toward his fifth season with the Hurricanes, it is safe to say that Cristobal has managed to transform what many called a mediocrity-laced program into a powerhouse.

Before the head coach joined in December 2021, the team was a stagnant program caught in over a decade of struggles, going 28-21 from 2018 to 2021 under Manny Diaz and Mark Richt. The pre-Cristobal era was marked by lower-tier bowl games, an inability to win the ACC, losses to top non-conference teams, and brain drain as South Florida’s top high school talent fled to SEC powerhouses.

However, it was Cristobal who turned this culture with a grueling “Saban-style” blueprint. In fact, his recruiting savviness is what stands as a focal point of his program’s success. Using new college football rules to land elite high school players and top transfers like superstar quarterback Cam Ward, the changes paid off quickly, leading to back-to-back 10-win seasons and a school-record 13 wins for Miami.

In fact, the Hurricanes even made the College Football Playoff for the first time ever last season, and made the national championship for the first time since 2002.

“That’s our leader,” edge rusher Akheem Mesidor said about Cristobal. “And I’m ready to do whatever it takes for him. If he tells me, ‘You run through this wall and we’re gonna get to the national championship,’ I’m gonna run through that wall. I believe in him. We all believe in him. So whatever he says, we’re all gonna follow.”