Whats going on Titans fans? Not a Titans fan here, but I am a lifelong bleed Orange and Green Miami Hurricane (was dressed in UM gear as a baby, went to undergrad at the U when we fielded the greatest college football team of all time, and am now finishing up my 17th year as a prof @ the U). When it comes to the NFL I grew up a Bucs fan, but mostly I root for whatever NFL team has the most former Canes on it.
Anyway, have been enjoying reading this forum for the last month as it became clear you all were going to do the smart thing and take Cam. Wanted to make an account and share my thoughts that as hyped up as you all have gotten yourselves over Cam Ward I can assure you that you guys aren't just drinking the Kool Aid and falling victim to overoptimism bias. Cam is legitimately the real deal in every way as a leader, athlete, and human being. Im going to share a couple brief stories:
First is our pursuit of Cam "starting" (lol) when he entered the portal in December 2023. Our HC Mario Cristobal is as intense a dude as you will ever in your life meet and is committed with every fiber in his body to restoring the U back to championship levels and he prioritizes acquiring talent who share the same intensity and commitment. We had the top two transfer QBs from that cycle visit us right off the bat (Cam and a dude I will not name who is now a national champion for some school in Ohio thanks largely to a receiver from Miami who should have stayed home lol). They were both on campus at the same time for part of their visits in fact, and the other QB was ready to commit on the spot. Mario, however, was obsessed with Cam and felt strongly that Cam was a world apart from anything else and was a dog in ways that you only see once in a generation, and Mario decided he was all in on Cam and willing to risk ending up landing no QB while waiting for Cam to work through his decision to go pro or not. And so we waited for over a month for Cam to finally decide to withdraw from the draft and come play for us and our plan to elevate him to 1st round. During that month we watched every viable QB sign with other teams while we sat empty handed. l It is difficult to convey how much coach risked with that approach. I'm sure you can all imagine very few head coaches would ever take that kind of a risk in these days where coaches have very short lifespans, and among the coaches who do have the guts to take such a risk , there's very very few players they'd ever encounter who would be worth it.
Second story is from early summer voluntary workouts right around this time last year as the spring semester had wrapped up. Cam organized the receivers to go run routes and throw/catch with him and one of the receivers wasn't there. So Cam called him up and said where you at man. The receiver said he was actually up in the north side of town running routes and catching with Lamar Jackson. Cam responded that he wasn't going to be catching any passes from Lamar Jackson in the Fall and if he wants to be catching passes for the U come August he better get his ass down to Coral Gables in the next hour. That is a 100% legit no embellishment story and it is the first moment when I saw why coach Cristobal had risked so much to go all in after Cam.
You all truly got a generational dude at the helm now.