By Dana O’Neil, CNN
Miami Gardens, Florida (CNN) — Mario Campos grew up deep in the hills of Cuba, a guajiro as the poor farmers there were called.
Despite his rural roots, Campos wound his way to a job with the national police. He kept his position for 26 years, until Fidel Castro came to power and those who worked under the Batista regime were tossed into prison.
Campos was one of the lucky ones. His association with the overthrown Batista government was through the police and not political, a distinction that may have spared him his life and certainly aided his relatively early release from prison. In 1961, as soon as he was freed, Campos fled Cuba for Florida.
He could not speak, write or read English, and the country he now called home did not necessarily want him. In the early 1960s businesses readily hung “Cubans Don’t Apply” signs on their windows. Undeterred, Campos taught himself the language, found work as a dishwasher, and saved up his money so he could buy a produce truck.
Idling along the road one day for a lunch break, Campos spied someone building houses. He struck up a conversation with the man about his job, diving some basic information about construction and determined – with absolutely no background or experience whatsoever – that he, too, could become a general contractor.
In 1970, Campos Construction Company Inc., filed for incorporation. Mario Campos would build and work on houses well into his 70s, including a string along SW 25th Street in Miami that belonged to his extended family.
On Monday night, Mario Cristobal – a second-generation Cuban American, the son and grandson of Cuban exiles, and one-time resident of 6713 SW 25th Street – will lead the University of Miami onto the Hard Rock Stadium field for the College Football Playoff national championship, a personal ascension nearly as improbable as the team revolution at Indiana.
“Our grandfather, he had this philosophy,’’ Cristobal’s big brother Lou told CNN Sports. “If anybody can do it, I can do it, too. That’s kind of what we all believed.’’
An only-in-South-Florida tale
In every family there is the rule follower … and the other one. Typically, the oldest colors between the lines.
“I was the maniac,’’ Lou laughs.
Not like a law breaker; more like a gremlin. Mario was the kid who set his shoes out just right every night before he went to bed. Lou came in and tossed them around before morning. Mario played video games until he mastered them. Lou hit reset when the game didn’t go his way.
Truth be told, neither of them wanted to do anything to disappoint their parents. Luis Cristobal Sr., and Clara were of their generation – faithful to their church, their family and their work. Like his father-in-law, Luis emigrated to Florida in the early 1960s. He did not fare as well in the Cuban prisons. One of the youngest government workers in the Batista regime, he spent two years in captivity, was tortured regularly and twice stared down the barrels of a firing squad.
He came to the US with no money and no family – his parents and sister opted to settle in Puerto Rico. Luis opened a car battery business and Clara went to work with Kendall Toyota processing titles. He worked until he died, often attending to cars in his driveway for friends and family who needed help. Clara retired at 79. They socked away everything they had for their boys.
But the family’s culture was not predicated on just giving. The boys were expected to earn their way with good grades and respect. There is a famed story about Campos, eyeing the boys foot-dragging, taking them out back and teaching them how to march.
“They were absolutely relentless in their pursuit of just doing everything they could to provide for us,’’ Mario Cristobal said. “My dad was a hard-nosed, tough-ass son of a gun. That’s what I know. And I’m forever grateful for him being hard on us and never gifted us anything, made us work for everything. I thank God for that.”
As Cuban exiles, they walked a difficult and painful tightrope. The boys were reared in Cuban traditions. The first day of kindergarten, for example, coincided with the first day of judo lessons. The sport is incredibly popular there, in no small part due to the country’s Olympic success: 37 medals, six of them gold. Lou long ago gave up the sport but Mario still practices jujitsu.
Yet despite clinging proudly to their identities as Cubans, Luis and Clara vowed to never return home until their country was fully independent. Even now, years after his parents’ deaths, Lou holds fast.
“I can’t explain it. It’s like an ache for something you never had,’’ he said. “But my father would roll over in his grave if I went.’’
Getting on the coaching ladder
The boys grew up in lockstep, Mario parroting whatever Lou did. Judo to baseball and eventually to football, St. Theresa’s elementary to Christopher Columbus High School to the U. Mario, true to his in-between-the-lines personality, succeeded everywhere he went. Good student, good football player, straight arrow.
When he arrived at the U in 1988, he did not exactly fit the vibe. Player arrests combined with the Hurricanes’ swagger had turned Miami into the bad boys of college football, a brand they happily leaned into.
In 1985, players were arrested for a variety of offenses, ranging from disorderly conduct to arson. In 1986, the Hurricanes refused to shake hands for the coin flip against defending national champion Oklahoma. For the 1987 Fiesta Bowl against Penn State, the Hurricanes deplaned wearing combat fatigues and – during Mario’s 1988 redshirt season – Miami played Notre Dame in the now famous Catholics vs. Convicts game.
The offensive lineman stayed above the fray, graduating with a degree in business, and wound up playing professionally in Amsterdam for NFL Europe. While Lou segued easily into a career with the Miami-Dade police force, Mario needed time after retiring to figure out his path.
He tried marketing, driving around a Garfield in a convertible as part of a public relations gig, and gave serious consideration to becoming a Secret Service agent, going so far as to take the test. But when new Miami coach Butch Davis offered him a graduate assistant’s position on the Miami staff, he felt like things came together.
He signed on even after the Secret Service said he’d passed their tests.
The coaching ladder beckoned onward and upward – assistant gigs with Miami and Rutgers and back to Miami. He’d often talk to his big brother from the road recruiting, calling Lou at all hours of the night. Lou wanted him to sleep; Mario said he had to work. The payoff came when he landed a head coaching job at home, albeit at the off-Broadway version of Miami football.
Florida International University football existed for three years before Mario arrived, but barely. FIU had no weight room and eight wins to show for itself, and none the year before Cristobal took over. The school also was on probation for NCAA violations that cost the roster 24 scholarships and was under the gun for academics. Its APR was so low that any ineligible player resulted in yet another docked scholarship.
But Luis and Clara’s son was undeterred.
“It’s the ultimate challenge,’’ Mario said. “You find out what you’re truly made of and who has your back. You start finding out everything that goes with college football. How the bursar’s office works, how registration and academics and the department and supervision and RAs and recruiting budgets and travel. And you have to do everything, every single part of it. You have to be a coach, you have to be a CFO, CEO, a provost. You have to do it all.”
So, when Mario reconstructed the mess into a back-to-back bowl team, no one expected the athletic director to can him after a 3-9 slip up. And yet he did. Mario doubled back for the Alabama cleansing, Nick Saban’s football version of a papal blessing and three years on staff making Mario hirable again. By 2018, he’d landed a plum job. Oregon had everything FIU didn’t – history, facilities and Phil Knight.
What it didn’t offer was home. Miami came calling and, despite leading the Ducks to two Pac 12-titles and the Rose Bowl, the tug pulled hard. As he weighed the decision, Mario called the person outside his family he considers a true mentor.
Dennis Lavelle was Lou and Mario’s coach at Christopher Columbus. He took, as Mario described it, “the handoff” from Luis and Clara when it came to directing the boys.
“You got to go,’’ Lavelle told him.
So, he went.
It all comes back to the U
It is one thing to coach in Miami; it is another altogether to coach Miami. The competitive U of old had long since disappeared. When he was hired, the Hurricanes had finished in the top 25 just four times in 16 years and had one legit bowl bid – the Orange Bowl in 2017 – on its roster. Yet it retained its outlaw reputation.
Mario was handed the double-edged job of cleaning up the school’s image while simultaneously restoring its football glory. Some would argue the two don’t go hand in hand. The rule follower disagreed.
After Mario left, the school was hit with NCAA sanctions in 1995 following a Pell Grant scandal in which an academic advisor falsified financial aid for more than 50 players. In 2013, an extracted and ugly 30-month investigation into booster Nevin Shapiro revealed impermissible benefits dating back 10 years, including parties on his yacht and at various Miami clubs. The school agreed to forego two bowl invites, reduce scholarships and accept three years’ probation.
“Don’t get twisted with him,’’ Lou said. “Just because he’s very articulate, nice and charming, and a good human. The guy is an animal. I mean that in the best sense of the word. There is no quit in that guy. You have to kill him to beat him.’’
He did what he always did, what his parents taught him to do. He worked. No smoke and mirrors. Just work. He focused on recruiting, partnering top freshman classes with smart transfer portal additions. It didn’t happen overnight. The Hurricanes were 5-7 in his first season and 7-6 in the next.
Even this year, in what would be considered the breakthrough as they play for the national title, more people believed the 11-2 Canes didn’t belong in the playoffs than did.
Mario has long pushed back on the narrative that the U is back.
“It’s nostalgia theater in this country,’’ he said earlier this year. “Everyone wants to go back, back, back. Well, we don’t want to go back. We want to go forward.’’
But it is hard not to go back, way back, now that Mario has nearly closed the circle in full. He will coach his alma mater for a national title a handful of miles from the house he grew up in, the one his grandfather built.
Mario Campos died in 1992 of cancer. Luis Cristobal died in 1996, while Mario was playing in Amsterdam. Clara Cristobal lay dying in a hospital when her son landed his dream job. Intubated and unable to talk, she nonetheless squeezed her boys’ hands to let them know she was aware of what was happening. She died that spring.
Lou is left to represent the family, a job he carries with immense pride. He likens his brother’s success to a drop of water beating on a rock. Methodical, constant but eventually effective. He is dizzy with the thought of sitting in the stands and watching his baby brother lead the Canes into a title game. But he is not surprised. No one, among his family, he says would be.
“They would have expected it,’’ Lou said. “My father, he was the guy who said you had to work hard. My grandfather, he taught us if you put your mind to it, you could do it. My mom would be more emotional. But man, they would have had a blast. I know my dad and grandfather are up there smoking big old stogies, and my mom is batting her eyes against the tears. I can see them up there. They’re dancing.”
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
From Castro’s prisons to the College Football Playoff title game: Mario Cristobal’s only-in-Miami road to football success News Channel 3-12.
Hence then, the article about from castro s prisons to the college football playoff title game mario cristobal s only in miami road to football success was published today ( ) and is available on News channel ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( From Castro’s prisons to the College Football Playoff title game: Mario Cristobal’s only-in-Miami road to football success )
Also on site :