Preseason rankings and last year's results are as meaningless as they should be for Mario Cristobal

If you take any stock in the college football preseason polls (and you shouldn't), the Miami Hurricanes basically have a two-game schedule this year. 

But in today's college football landscape, the preseason polls are even more useless than they were prior to the era of ever-changing rosters, which means things might not be as easy as they appear. It could also mean Miami will steamroll through this schedule. But more than likely, this will be somewhere in the middle.

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Mario Cristobal isn't interested in Miami's preseason rankings

For the second straight year, the Hurricanes will open the season in the top 10. This good news is that this is the first time that has happened since the stretch from 2000-2005. Last season, Miami opened at No. 10 and beat Notre Dame in Week 1. 

The better news is Mario Cristobal doesn't care about this ranking. He's said repeatedly that college football is too much of a beauty contest for him and things should be settled on the field. And this year's team can't live off of the success of last year.

"People get caught up in their own success. You've got to hammer the living dog out of it on a daily basis," Cristobal said on the Joe Rose Show. "You've got to be factual, truthful, honest and transparent about the fact that that's last year's team and has very little to do with the 2026 Miami Hurricanes."

This year's ranking, No. 7, seems about right and gives the Hurricanes room to grow. But this is also a season where there isn't really a clear No. 1 team going into the season. Miami feels like one of eight or nine teams that could legitimately stake claim to the position. I come from the school of Ric Flair, where you must beat the man to be the man. Using that method of thinking, Indiana remains the No. 1 team until something on the field suggests otherwise.

These rankings change quickly in those first few weeks too.

The last time Miami was ranked inside the top-10 to start a season was 2018, when the Hurricanes were No. 8. They proceeded to get whipped by LSU in Week 1 and were dropped to No. 22 the following week. 

The chances are slim that fate will repeat itself in a month when the Hurricanes open their season on a Friday night at Stanford, but it can always happen. Currently, Miami has just two teams on its schedule rated in the preseason top 25 — Notre Dame is 5th and Clemson is 23rd. Both games are on the road this year and have been circled repeatedly by fans. 

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Look at some of the teams in the top 25. Penn State? Iowa? Missouri hasn't beaten a team with a winning record in two years. No one knows what Tennessee is going to do. Many of the teams you see on this poll will be non-factors by the middle of the season. Cristobal just wants to make sure that Miami isn't part of that group. 

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