Here’s an odd one to wrap your orange-and-green mind around:
Alonzo Highsmith is leaving the University of Miami football team to return to the New England Patriots, a program source confirmed.
What looked like a perfect marriage with his hometown Hurricanes and a seamless job fit for a new era in college football ends in divorce less than two years into the Mario Cristobal Era.
Why did Highsmith want to leave?
The larger unanswered question is why he didn’t want to stay in a job where he checked all the boxes. Change always happens in offseasons. But there’s been such high-profile change in Cristobal’s two seasons — both coordinators the first year, the quarterback room this second year — that Highsmith would be just another name on the list if it weren’t for who he is and why he came.
“It’s a natural fit for me,’’ as he said a year ago of his newly created job of general manager of football operations.
It seemed the natural time, too, with college football changed by the transfer portal and name-image-and-likeness money. Many programs have hired the head coach a lieutenant to scout transferring names and help understand their talent and value.
Who better than a 24-year veteran of NFL scouting departments, from the entry-level scout in Green Bay to the vice president of pro personnel with the Cleveland Browns? Who more comfortable than a former Hurricane great whose roots go so deep in South Florida he lived his senior year at Christopher Columbus High with the family of his teammate, Mike Shula.
That’s right, Highsmith lived with Don Shula.
“You just made the best linebacker in country a running back,’’ Shula told his former assistant and Hurricanes coach Howard Schnellenberger in Highsmith’s freshman year.
Highsmith scored a touchdown against Nebraska in the program’s first national title, became one of coach Jimmy Johnson’s favorites and was the third pick taken in the NFL draft. None of that has anything to do with Highsmith leaving Coral Gables four decades later. It just helps explain who’s leaving.
It also says something went off the rails in how he envisioned his role and Cristobal did. It doesn’t make either wrong. It’s just disappointing that a program trying to get back to relevancy couldn’t find use for a homegrown talent who has made a career finding talent.
“My strength is understanding what great players look like,’’ Highsmith said a year ago. “I scouted in the NFL for 24 years. I’ve been god-blessed to scout (former Miami greats) Jon Beason and Jonathan Vilma and all these guys like that.
“So, I understand what good players look like. It doesn’t mean I’m always going to be right. But I know talent. I understand what it looks like, what it smells like, what a great player looks like running — I’ve seen it all.”
The disappointing part is a 58-year-old who returned to Miami with full enthusiasm doesn’t see a fit for himself here anymore. He returns to work in the personnel department of an NFL team and Miami moves into a third, telling season under Cristobal.
This is the year Cristobal’s full culture and recruited players should take hold. The inexplicable moments like not kneeling for the win against Georgia Tech this year or going into this offseason with two time-outs from the Pinstripe Bowl loss to Rutgers suggest Cristobal could use some direct advice in places.
What’s obvious to see in game-day decisions isn’t so clear behind the curtain of the program. Something happened over the past two years to what seemed like the perfect marriage with Highsmith, though. Something went wrong for him to leave a position that seems made for him and the program he loves.
“I thought it was a no-brainer for myself,’’ he said upon taking this job. “I love the University of Miami.”
He no doubt still loves Miami. It’s just odd how it worked that he’ll love it from afar again.
