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ARLINGTON, Texas — Miami Hurricanes fans surely have been thinking about that 2003 Fiesta Bowl for the past week. It’s natural, given the opponent and the magnitude of the game, for the memories to resurface.
Miami against Ohio State for the national title. A chance for UM to repeat as champions and claim their sixth overall title. The back-and-forth affair, rallying from a 10-point second-half deficit to force overtime.
And then, the heartbreak. The controversial call in the first overtime — the pass interference penalty on Miami’s Glenn Sharpe on what would have been the game-ending play that instead gave the Buckeyes life and eventually set Ohio State up to win 31-24 in double overtime.
A few days shy of 23 years to the day since that game at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz., the Hurricanes and Buckeyes meet again in postseason action. This time, it’s No. 10 Miami (11-2) and No. 2 Ohio State (12-1) playing in the Cotton Bowl on Wednesday in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal contest, with the Buckeyes the reigning national champions looking to repeat. Kickoff from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, is set for 7:30 p.m., with the game broadcast on ESPN.
And while, yes, that 2003 Fiesta Bowl is a noted storyline and talking point in the lead-up to the game, Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal wanted nothing to do with it.
“We’re focused on the present,” Cristobal said last week. “We’re focused on the present.”
Not that he doesn’t understand why that game is being brought up. Memories, good or bad, define college football history. Fan bases latch onto them.
His team — the one that takes the field Wednesday — needs to make sure what happens in the present is their only priority.
“Games like this, with two storied programs, I think people are always going to want to, I don’t know, pull out history and draw comparisons and all that other stuff,” Cristobal said. “And moments like that, they’re valid. They’re real. It’s what makes college football awesome, the pageantry. But this game is the 2025 Hurricanes and Buckeyes going after it, to be determined by the 22 guys on the field one snap at a time. That’s going to be the focus. That’s where all our attention will be.”
That’s how Miami has approached things all season. As the Hurricanes have taken the latest steps toward being regulars in the national spotlight again in their fourth season under Cristobal — winning double-digit games for the second consecutive season, making the playoff field for the first time, winning a first-round playoff game at Texas A&M as a road underdog — the coach has found ways to keep the team solely focused on what is ahead.
“All the work and the process has validated a lot of things,” Cristobal said.
They have a chance for even more validation in their biggest game of the season. Miami faces an Ohio State team that won the national championship last season, remains loaded and for the majority of the season was ranked the No. 1 team in the country before falling to Indiana in the Big Ten Championship Game.
The Buckeyes have four consensus All-Americans in wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, defensive tackle Kayden McDonald, linebacker Arvell Reese and safety Caleb Downs. Quarterback Julian Sayin was a Heisman Trophy finalist. Running back Bo Jackson produced a 1,000-yard season.
They have the nation’s best scoring defense, allowing an average of just 8.3 points per game and not allowing any team to score more than 16 points on them all season.
Naturally, Ohio State is the heavy favorite — the consensus betting line has the Buckeyes favored by 9.5 points as of Tuesday.
But when Hurricanes have been told this week they’re an “underdog,” they have mostly scoffed it off. Let those outside the program think what they want. What happens on the field Wednesday will determine everything.
“We don’t place any value or strategic changes as it relates to a term like ‘underdog’ or ‘favorite.’ It’s never been a part of the process,” Cristobal said. “Our messaging has been consistent the entire year on how we approach our opponents, how we approach our processes. We’re very process-oriented. We’re very intense and very intentional in how we approach every single opponent, and this one is one that we approach in the same manner. It’s what we know. It’s what has granted us success throughout the course of the year, and certainly we’re going to stick to that.”
Added edge rusher Akheem Mesidor a little more bluntly: “I don’t really care about what anybody has to say. I play football. We all play football. We all believe in each other and believe in ourselves, so all the exterior noise and stuff, I don’t really care for it. I’m just here to play football.”
The Hurricanes are no strangers to the situation they’re currently in. They have been playing with their backs against the wall ever since the start of November when they lost in overtime to SMU for their second loss in a three-week span. One more misstep along the way would have ended any slim hopes they had of making the 12-team playoff field.
But they responded with four consecutive wins to close out the regular season by a combined score of 151-41 to sneak into the field with the final at-large bid. They followed that up with a 10-3 win over Texas A&M, riding their top defense that forced three turnovers and seven sacks, to begin this playoff journey.
And Miami has some pretty good players of its own. Rueben Bain Jr. and Mesidor form one of the top one-two edge rusher tandems in the country and set up a defense as a whole that has been transformed under first-year UM defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman. Right tackle Francis Mauigoa anchors one of the country’s top offensive lines. Freshman phenom Malachi Toney has his name all over Miami’s record book. Running back Mark Fletcher Jr. is coming off the best game of his career. Quarterback Carson Beck brings noted experience into a high-stakes contest.
“At the end of the day, it’s a chess game,” Beck said. “The offensive versus defensive battle, they do this and we do that. And checks and balances and just seeing things happen before they happen.”
A lot will probably have to go right for Miami to pull off the upset, for the Hurricanes to keep their hopes for a championship alive, but the Hurricanes got to this point for a reason, and they’re not counting themselves out.
“At this point,” Mauigoa said, “we’re coming to take it all.”
