Mario Cristobal's Miami rebuild rooted in work at Greentree - ESPN

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — There is a new energy around Greentree — perhaps the only practice field in America with its own name. Ask any Miami football player to talk about their time as a Hurricane, and inevitably Greentree comes up.

That includes second-year Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal, who put his own sweat equity into the Greentree practice fields during his time as a Miami player from 1989 to 1992. To those like Cristobal who won national championships with the Canes, that practice field is hallowed ground, and is symbolic of all the work it took to win it all. That is what Cristobal wants to get back to; that is what he wants his players to know and understand.

There's renewed energy here a few weeks before the season opens. A year into the job, Cristobal has turned over the roster, revamped his coaching staff, brought in a top-flight recruiting class and built from the inside out — starting with the offensive line, the position he played at Miami. Practice is more spirited and competitive; the progress is there.

Cristobal points to his towering freshman offensive tackles, Francis Mauigoa and Samson Okunlola, as difference-makers, then raves about center Matt Lee, a transfer from UCF. On and on he goes, touting the vast changes and improvements made across the board to get Miami closer to his vision for the program.

«The massive amount of work done in one year has put us on a great trajectory to begin progressing at a good rate,» Cristobal told ESPN in a recent interview. «The secret is out there in the dirt. Put your hand in the dirt. Go to work. The work done over this past year has been incredible.»

There might be no better measurement for how far Miami has come from a disappointing 5-7 record in 2022 than