Miami Turning Disrespect and Physicality Into Motivation to Accomplish Rare Playoff Feat

The Hurricanes are the only CFP team left with a history of success, and they want to add another title on their home field this season.

Miami defensive lineman Akheem Mesidor chases Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin during the Cotton Bowl. / Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — It is a great testament to the coaching acumen and motivational abilities of the Miami coaching staff that the group of Hurricanes which arrived in the Arizona desert this week for the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Fiesta Bowl have leaned into all the perceived slights and insults hurled in the program’s direction over the last 25 years. 

Every doubt, every negative comment, every creeping sense of resentment heaped upon The U—both real and imagined—has more or less found a way into the back of every player’s mind ahead of their matchup with Mississippi on Thursday. Those doubts helped enlarge the giant chip on the shoulder of the Canes that would likely dwarf the nearby Camelback Mountain in both size and scale. 

“Back in the 2000s, and ’90s, and ’80s, you know it wasn’t the case. But these past two decades, The U has kind of been through a bunch of different issues and speed bumps,” said defensive lineman Akheem Mesidor. “Now we’re viewed as the underdog every week, every year. We’ve embraced that.”

It’s a mentality that is not uncommon to have in football, where even five-stars manufacture external doubts about their perception with regularity, but one which prompts a bit of a double take for those of a certain age and especially so given who Miami’s three peers are in this season’s semifinal round.

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Top seed Indiana was, until midseason in 2025, the losingest power-conference program. Oregon has come to be the poster program for using mega donors to lift the profile of both the team and university into that of a nouveau riche national power. Ole Miss was quick to embrace the new era of name, image and likeness to help power the Rebels to historic heights the last few years but are incomprehensibly 2–0 in the CFP under a different head coach than the one they began the season with.

Miami, for all of the self-inflicted stumbles since it last played in this game and suffered an infamous loss in the 2003 BCS national championship that sent the program spiraling from the forefront of the sport’s consciousness, is the general exception to this motley group of ringless programs. The Hurricanes are the only ones who have illustrious history on their side, even if they approach their first CFP semifinal just like each of the other three teams that are aiming to become the newest first-time national champion since the 1996 Florida squad.

“We [at Miami] all have that underdog mentality and we all feel like we have something to prove. I think it upped our game, it upped our physicality, it’s made guys prepare differently,” Mesidor said. “We thrive off guys hating. We thrive off it. We love being the underdog and we don’t care if you don’t believe in us, we believe in each other and we’re going to play like we’ve got something to prove.”

In that, the Hurricanes’ differentiator is not necessarily their underlying motivation but rather the thing that they have held their hats on under coach Mario Cristobal the last few years: their physicality.

That is not something they pay lip service to around Coral Gables, Fla., either but a true ethos which has shown up in how Miami’s roster was assembled and how the players carry themselves between the lines as they’ve hit the doorstep of the national title game next week in their own city.

“We try to use ‘physical’ [when talking] to the media but when it’s in a closed-door setting, ‘violence’ is the word we use,” equally intense defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman said. “Football is a physical game, football’s a violent game. That’s what we want to be on defense.

“That’s who I am. This is who the coaches are. And, Day 1, that is what we started doing.”

It certainly paid off taking the Hurricanes from the last at-large team in the playoff field to knocking off No. 7 Texas A&M and No. 2 Ohio State prior to meeting the final SEC team left standing. 

Against the Aggies on the road, Hetherman’s defense was the embodiment of that violence he talked about by owning the line of scrimmage and sacking quarterback Marcel Reed seven times (following that up with five more against Buckeyes’ Heisman finalist Julian Sayin). Neither opponent came close to reaching any of their offensive averages for the season either as Miami proved particularly stout on the ground by limiting its opponents to just 2.2 yards per carry in the CFP.

The same is true on the other side of the ball. Offensive tackle Francis Mauigoa was named a consensus All-American this season and played a big role in the team’s upset of Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl. He opened holes for a rushing attack that notched 153 yards and a score against a group which had not allowed a rushing touchdown or triple-digits ground yards in a game all season. That came on the heels of rushing for 175 yards against A&M to the point where even quarterback Carson Beck began pleading with coordinator Shannon Dawson to just keep running the ball down their throats. 

“We want to win every single week and that’s what we’re striving for. I don’t really care what any critic or anybody has to say, we’re going to play violent football and we’re going to play it every week,” Mesidor said. 

If the Hurricanes play that way this week against Ole Miss and emerge victorious in a bowl game they have lost in heartbreaking fashion four different times in the last 40 years, they would be in one of the rarest positions in college football with a final game on their home field for a national title and the right to firmly put a claim on The U being back on top of the sport.

“We most definitely have those talks about it, but we try to just stay focused one game at a time,” tailback Mark Fletcher Jr. says. “But it’s also kind of hard not to [say], ‘Man, what if?’ It’s like it’s meant for us, I believe.”

“The thought has come up, but I try not to think about [playing at home for the title] too much,” Mesidor added. “It’s really like a Cinderella story, it would be crazy.” 

Some might think Miami trying to slip on the title of Cinderella in a playoff where it is the only school left that could remotely lay claim to being a blueblood is what is absurd. This season, though, thanks in part to the physicality that has gotten them in such a position, the Hurricanes have an opportunity to do that. 

Doubt it and decry it all you want, these Canes won’t mind adding that to the mountain of disbelief they’ve already done a decent job of defying so far.

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