MIAMI BEACH — The digital billboards displayed across South Florida allude to a well-documented storyline: “All Roads Lead Home. ” Monday’s College Football Playoff national championship has been widely billed as a Cuban-American collision beyond belief.
MIAMI BEACH — The digital billboards displayed across South Florida allude to a well-documented storyline:
“All Roads Lead Home.”
Monday’s College Football Playoff national championship has been widely billed as a Cuban-American collision beyond belief. Two graduates of the same Miami Catholic high school fighting for a title that has long eluded their respective programs.
Fernando Mendoza, Indiana’s Heisman Trophy winner, against Mario Cristobal, the Hurricanes coach who has brought his alma mater back to relevance.
These two men, however, are far from the only ones living a major full-circle moment.
This was clear during Saturday’s media day, when one player and coach after another spoke to the personal significance of a championship game in Miami.
Their statements sat with more sincerity than the usual pre-game pleasantries, their appreciation for the moment they are living seemingly too great to suppress.
Of course, there’s Cristobal’s team as a whole.
The Miami Hurricanes, nearly left for dead after two midseason conference losses blemished their resume, have forged an improbable road back to their home stadium for the program’s first national championship game appearance since Jan. 3, 2003.
They’ve done so with 49 players from Florida, more than half of them from South Florida. Indiana has nine players from this state.
“It’s a dream come true,” said Miami running back and Plantation American Heritage product Mark Fletcher Jr.
Fletcher was committed to Ohio State for eight months before flipping to his hometown program. He bought into Cristobal’s vision and did not waiver after a rocky start to the coach’s tenure.
His mother drives to each of his games, playoff games in Texas and Arizona included. She’s excited to only have to drive 15 minutes to the championship.
His father, who died in 2024, raised him to be a massive Hurricanes fan. Fletcher has played inspired football all season, still texting his father before every game.
The tribute has resonated with fans across the country.
“To be able to make history, to be able to have little kids say that it was Mark Fletcher who played in the national championship game for the Hurricanes, it just means everything to me,” he said.
Malachi Toney, Miami’s standout freshman receiver who turned 18 in September and would still be at Plantation American if he hadn’t reclassified, has repped the Hurricanes since his youth football days.
Earlier in the week, a 2016 picture of a young Toney with then-Miami head coach Mark Richt surfaced online.
“It played a big role now that I reflect on it,” Toney said of Richt’s visit to his local field. “Who would have thought I’d be at the University of Miami as of right now, looking back at that picture?
“It’s one of them crazy, wild moments you never would have thought would happen.”
He’ll line up against D’Angelo Ponds, who long before he was Indiana’s star cornerback, was Toney’s youth league teammate on the Washington Park Buccaneers. Both played quarterback at the time.
As a high school player, Ponds once intercepted Mendoza, back when both were lower touted prospects. Now, the two NFL draft prospects joke about the memory, with Ponds maintaining Mendoza missed the post-interception tackle.
“It’s a special moment,” said Ponds, who won two state titles with Chaminade-Madonna. “Just to be back in this position in our hometown, with this great of an opportunity, it’s definitely a blessing, something you don’t see often.”
Jason Taylor, a Hall of Fame defensive end for the Miami Dolphins, joined the Hurricanes staff in 2022. On Saturday, his son, Isaiah Taylor, a reserve defensive back for the ’Canes who graduated from Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas, found himself in front of a television camera.
And Cristobal and Mendoza are not the only alums of Christopher Columbus High School. Miami offensive line coach Alex Mirabal is too. Mirabal, who has built arguably the best offensive line in the country, was interviewed by the school’s TV station Saturday.
From Miami’s perspective, these meaningful moments can be largely traced back to Cristobal, who left a strong program in Oregon because he could no longer bear to watch the Hurricanes toil in irrelevance.
He brought coaches like Mirabal with him, and convinced the likes of Fletcher and Rueben Bain Jr. to stay home, to believe that a once great Miami program was still capable of redemption.
Cristobal has dubbed himself the most boring interview in sports, ever committed to maintaining the stern and focused persona typical of successful football coaches.
That seemed to crack Saturday, even if only a little bit. There was a perceivable joy in his tone when he spoke of the moment he and his program are experiencing. It was particularly apparent when he answered a question from a reporter in Spanish.
His road has led him and many others home.
But Mendoza and Ponds, neither offered by Miami out of high school, have found their way back, too.
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Category: General Sports
