News

When: Monday, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Gardens

TV: ESPN

Coaches: Mario Cristobal 35-18 at UM, (97-78 overall); Curt Cignetti 26-2 at Indiana (145-37 overall)

Line: Indiana is favored by 7.5 points

Weather: 62 degrees, 0 percent chance of precipitation

Quick slant: Neither of these teams were likely national champions at the start of the season, and they took different paths to get to this game. UM overcame two midseason losses and had to beat two top SEC teams and the reigning national champions to reach the title game. Indiana, which entered the season as the losingest Division I program in the nation, has gone undefeated en route to Monday’s title game.

About No. 10 Miami (13-2): The Hurricanes snuck past Ole Miss in the semifinals, scoring a last-minute touchdown and surviving a desperate drive from the Rebels. UM has won five national championships, but has not played in a title game since the 2002 season.

About No. 1 Indiana (15-0): The Hoosiers have not seen much success in the program’s 139-year history. Indiana won its third Big 10 championship by beating Ohio State, and the Hoosiers routed Alabama and Oregon in the playoffs before facing UM.

1. The Hurricanes will have to slow down Hoosiers Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza. The Miami native has thrown more touchdown passes (eight) than incompletions (five) in the playoffs. Miami will have to find a way to contain him even though it is short on cornerbacks: Xavier Lucas will miss the first half of the game after being called for targeting penalty against Ole Miss, Damari Brown has missed every playoff game due to a foot injury and is questionable for Monday, and OJ Frederique Jr. has been banged up, playing just five snaps against Ole Miss.

2. Hurricanes quarterback Carson Beck will have to avoid turnovers against the Hoosiers. Indiana has 18 interceptions this season, including D’Angelo Ponds‘ game-opening pick-six against Oregon. Indiana is the No. 1 team in the nation in turnover margin (21 more takeaways than giveaways), so UM will need to be careful with the ball.

3. Miami will have to play mistake-free football against Indiana. The Hoosiers capitalize on other teams’ mistakes, and UM has been prone to errors this season. The Hurricanes are 85th nationally with 57.1 penalty yards per game. After having only four penalties for 30 yards in its first two playoff games, Miami had 10 penalties for 74 yards against Ole Miss in the semifinals.

MIAMI — Miami Hurricanes special teams analyst Ferras Isa is the guardian of the unit’s secret weapon.

One of his tasks is to prepare small shots of Cuban-style espresso for the staff and for the special teams players, who do a quick shot of cafecito before each game.

“Ferras makes the best coffee on the staff,” said UM coach and Miami native Mario Cristobal. “It’s part of his obligations and duties as an assistant coach. And he does, he makes the best one. In terms of the other ones, I don’t want to get into a competitive warfare in Miami as to who makes the best coffee, but it’s certainly an offseason project that I look forward to delving into.”

The Hurricanes’ special teams players have been caught on camera, drinking Isa’s coffee as they get ready for each game.

“He likes to call himself the Cafecito Coordinator,” UM special teams coach Danny Kalter told The Athletic.

Miami things

The Canes took shots of cafecito before the semis

MIAMI BEACH — The play continued, but Carson Beck knew he was done.

A Texas defender strip-sacked Beck, who was the Georgia starting quarterback in the SEC title game, and Beck landed in a heap on the Mercedes-Benz Stadium field.

“Obviously, I felt my arm. I felt everything,” Beck said. “It was one of the lowest moments of my life.”

Beck returned for one final play — to hand the ball off on the game-winning touchdown replacement Gunner Stockton had to come off the field — but his Bulldogs career was over, too.

Fast forward a year, and Beck is now the starting quarterback for the Miami Hurricanes as they get ready to play Indiana on Monday in the program’s first national title game since 2003. Beck got Miami to this point, running in the game-winning touchdown against Ole Miss in the playoff semifinal.

“Running into the end zone at Ole Miss, that was one of the highest moments of my life, one of the better memories that I’ll always hold onto and cherish,” Beck said. “Obviously, it’s been a crazy year of ups and downs, but to be able to get back to this point, it’s really awesome.”

Beck’s season-long tenure at Miami has come with its own ups and downs. He started off on a high, helping lead the Hurricanes to an upset victory over Notre Dame in the season-opener. But the lows came soon after. Beck threw four interceptions in a loss to Louisville.

“This is when I knew that, really, we were going to be fine because I went up to the office the next day, and he was extremely positive,” offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said. “I was probably more down than he was. But he was very positive, very move-on type approach.”

Beck did throw two more interceptions in a second loss to SMU (though one bounced off a receiver’s hands), but as the Hurricanes surged into the playoffs in the season’s final month, Beck was a major reason why. In UM’s last seven wins — including the program’s first three playoff victories — Beck has completed 74.4 percent of his passes for 1,634 yards. Most importantly, he had 15 touchdown passes and just two interceptions.

“His superpower is understanding football,” Dawson said. “He dissects the game very quickly in the run and pass game. In the run game, he does things that are next level, as far as getting people moved around and targeted up. Our run-game system has grown over time, and it takes a guy to understand where the fits are, especially with receivers and how their safeties are fitting or who the extra fitter is. So he’s really elite at that. And in the pass game, he takes care of the football.”

UM coach Mario Cristobal, who recruited Beck to Miami, has called Beck “misunderstood.” He said Beck is locked in on winning and helping people around him.

“His experience, both good and bad, has allowed him to come in and establish himself very quickly as a leader and one that has helped groom leadership within the team itself,” Cristobal said. “It starts with the fact that he’s an unselfish person. Tons of gratitude to him. He wants to win and he wants to see people around him do really, really well. He has absolutely zero interest in personal accolades and all that attention. He wants to do right by people.”

Beck’s Miami and college career will end in either celebration or dejection on Monday night. Beck won a pair of national titles as a backup at Georgia, but now he will try to win one as the starting quarterback.

“Obviously, it feels awesome,” Beck said. “To finally be the guy and the quarterback, a part of a team that has done this and gone through a season and eventually earned the opportunity to play in a national championship, obviously it’s a dream of mine.”

MIAMI BEACH — When D’Angelo Ponds left South Florida, he was a fringe prospect listed as the No. 1,966 recruit in the 2023 class. He was headed to James Madison University, a Sun Belt team one year removed from playing in the FCS division.

Ponds, a Chaminade-Madonna alum, is back in South Florida now, looking to beat his hometown team, the Miami Hurricanes, and win a championship with Indiana at Hard Rock Stadium on Monday night.

“It’s definitely a full circle moment for me,” Ponds said. “Just going to a stadium that I drove past every day — I live probably like five minutes away from the stadium — it’s just definitely a full-circle moment. Just watching the teams play in that stadium as well, and being my hometown, it’s definitely a blessing.”

Ponds was not expected to become a star player. Ponds, who was a South Florida Sun Sentinel All-County second-team pick as a senior, is 5 foot 9, which is considered short for a cornerback. But then-James Madison coach Curt Cignetti did not care about that.

“He was a guy who didn’t look at the size. He looked at the film,” Ponds said. “He was a guy who actually watched the film and (saw) how it affects the game instead of looking at size and letting that dictate me as a player. He was a guy who is going to play the best player on the field no matter how old you are or anything like that.”

Ponds rewarded Cignetti’s faith immediately.

“You saw it in camp right away,” Cignetti said. “First week of camp, he’s out there, he was holding a little bit, but he cleaned that up and became a starter. When he became my starter my last year at JMU, I think it was down at Troy … they had won the Sun Belt the year before, and we beat them at Troy. He started and he made plays right off the bat, first series that impacted the game, and he’s been a great player ever since.”

Ponds ended his first season with 51 tackles, 13 pass breakups and two interceptions. Pro Football Focus gave him an 89.6 defensive grade, which was eighth in the nation. He was named a Sun Belt All-Conference second-team selection and an FWAA Freshman All-American.

• Dave Hyde: Give Indiana the glass slipper; Miami wants the crown
• Game time: TV info, odds, keys to No. 10 Miami vs. No. 1 Indiana in title game
• The Miami Hurricanes’ secret special teams weapon? Cafecito
• UM’s Carson Beck went from his ‘lowest’ at Georgia to national title game with Miami
• Hurricanes focused on Monday’s national title game, not nostalgia or outside noise

“He’s been a great player,” said UM wide receiver Jojo Trader, who was teammates with Ponds in high school. “He’s been doubted his whole life because he’s small and stuff like that. But he’s got grit and he’s just hungry.”

When Cignetti left for Indiana after the 2023 season, Ponds deliberated on his future. After going through spring football at James Madison, Ponds opted to follow Cignetti to Indiana.

“He might be the best player I’ve ever coached that was with me throughout his entire career, in terms of consistency, production,” Cignetti said.

Ponds’ play has not slipped since he arrived in the Big 10. In 2024, he was a second-team All-American. He had another strong season in 2025, making 56 tackles with two interceptions — one of which was a game-opening pick-six against Oregon in the playoff semifinals.

“It’s been a blessing, honestly, … taking advantage of all my opportunities that I’ve gotten, not letting any doubters or naysayers affect me at all, and just to keep going and see how far I came,” Ponds said. “It’s just a blessing just to honestly prove everybody wrong and let the smaller guys know that they can do it, too, as well. I feel like a lot of those guys, they look up to me, and I feel like I’m just letting them know that they can do it.

Although the hometown Hurricanes overlooked him in his recruitment, Ponds said there are no hard feelings. He just wants to win on Monday.

“It’s just another game to me, honestly,” Ponds said. “It’s a national championship, an important one, but we’re just here to win a game.”

MIAMI — On one side of Monday’s national title game is the ultimate Cinderella story: Indiana was the losingest program in Division I history until this season. The Hoosiers are now one win away from an undefeated season en route to the program’s first championship.

On the other side, a Cinderella story in its own right: a Miami team that has not won a championship in nearly a quarter of a century. UM needed to sneak into the playoffs with two losses and beat two top SEC teams as well as last year’s national champions to get to Monday’s title bout, which is being played in their home stadium.

So what would it mean for these teams to hoist the championship trophy?

“It would mean we’re the national champion,” Hoosiers coach Curt Cignetti said at the coaches’ press conference on Sunday morning.

Cristobal nodded. “It would mean we’re the national champions,” he said.

Neither coach is interested in narratives or outside noise, even if everybody else is. Both coaches are locked in on preparing their respective teams to kick off at 7:30 p.m. at Hard Rock Stadium.

“I don’t think the external stuff has ever been a motivator for our team,” Cristobal said. “I think it’s always been internal. I think our guys always want to prove themselves right. And I think the confidence and the trust in each other was something that just continued to build momentum throughout the course of the season. It was a matter of just finally just looking at each other, looking in the mirror and making a commitment to work out the details to allow us to win in the margins.”

Cristobal has been asked frequently about Miami teams in the past and whether the Hurricanes are finally “back.” He never dwells on the question. He will compliment those teams, but he says this year’s UM team is different from the championship teams of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. He does not want to go “back.”

• Dave Hyde: Give Indiana the glass slipper; Miami wants the crown
• Game time: TV info, odds, keys to No. 10 Miami vs. No. 1 Indiana in title game
• The Miami Hurricanes’ secret special teams weapon? Cafecito
• UM’s Carson Beck went from his ‘lowest’ at Georgia to national title game with Miami
• Chaminade alum, Indiana star D’Angelo Ponds returns home for ‘full circle’ title game

“It’s nostalgia theater in this country,” Cristobal said on The Kevin Clark Show in September. “Everyone wants to go back, back, back. Well, we don’t want to go back. We want to go forward and take the principles of that brand of football and we want to take it forward.”

Cristobal reiterated Sunday that the Hurricanes are not getting caught up in sentimentality as they prepare for Monday’s game.

“Everyone is uniquely special and different and has brought something different to the lives of all the people around them,” Cristobal said. “But I don’t see us getting caught up in any nostalgic moments or whatnot. I just really sense that our team was really focused, that they were really intent on carrying out the rest of the day’s processes, knowing the tremendous opportunity that we have.”

Indiana has never played on this type of stage before, and the Hoosiers are the heavy favorites. But Indiana coach Curt Cignetti is demanding his team be locked in for the game on Monday, too. He said he saw an ESPN report that his team’s players were hugging each other and exchanging kind words after practice on Friday, and while that is nice, the time for that has passed.

“I think leading up to this game there’s been a lot of pro-Indiana hype, a lot of rat poison out there,” Cignetti said. “I happened to see Holly Rowe’s thing on social media this morning about our guys hugging each other at the end of practice. It is a close team, and I witnessed quite a bit of sentimentalism throughout the week from some of our seniors who we’ve been with quite a long time.

“I think it’s time to sharpen the saw now, throw those warm fuzzies out the door, that sentimentalism. It’s time to go play a game against a great opponent. We’ve got to have a sharp edge going into this game, and you don’t go to war with warm milk and cookies.”