All right, welcome back to another edition of Through the Smoke, a Miami Hurricanes football and recruiting podcast here on the 24-7 Sports Network.

David Lake, joined as always by Gabby Urruthia, joined again by special guest, Mario Cristobal.

It's been some time since we caught up with them here on the podcast and wanted to jump on

and, you know, have an exciting 2026 ahead and wanted to kind of lay the groundwork for

this upcoming year.

Before we jump into things, want to highlight our sponsors, real quickly,

Kane's Connection. Go support those guys, canesconnection.com.

Nick Musserino, if you've been injured in any type of accident,

his information's in the show notes,

and hit up Aaron Pascal, if you're in the market for buying, selling,

or investing in real estate in

South Florida. All right, coach, thank you for joining us. This will be fun. I want to just start

with like looking back at the CFP run in general, right? And just I want to pick your brain on

maybe what you learned from navigating that run.

Because, you know, navigating a season is an art and, you know, it takes time to learn how to navigate a season.

I feel like now with a four-team CFP, right, four-game CFP, when you get to the championship game.

That's like learning how to navigate another season.

So what did you feel like you learned from that process, just having to go through that with everything involved, right?

Because it's a crazy time, a lot of stuff's going on too while you're playing games.

But just navigating that situation, what did you feel like you learned that you can take

and carry on it and move forward from that in future years?

Well, certainly, and first of all, thanks for having me on here.

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