Cote: Are No. 7 Miami Hurricanes really as good as they’ve looked? The proving starts now | Opinion

The Miami Hurricanes are this good ... or this is too good to be true. Which is it? We cannot know yet for sure. We are about to find out.

Until we do, though, Canes fans’ hesitation and even skepticism in the willingness to believe would be understandable. It has had more than 20 years to take root and grow. And the willingness to believe -- that this time it’s different, that The U is finally back -- only makes the hurt worse if this turns out to be just the latest big tease.

I don’t think it will be. This is not a mirage this time. UM is stacked all over the field. Cam Ward is Miami’s best quarterback since Ken Dorsey, and he might be better. Coach Mario Cristobal in his third season back has in full everything he has been trying to build.

Is even a 12-0 season possible? Absolutely it is.

Now all they have to do is prove it, and go do it.

The next four games beginning at home Friday night will tell us more about UM than the routs to this point that find the Canes 4-0 and ranked No. 7 in the nation. It has been a dream start that has Miami strongly positioned to make the 12-team College Football Playoff with Ward now the betting favorite to win the Heisman Trophy.

Now the dream start faces its reality-check with the onset of Atlantic Coast Conference play Friday vs. rival Virginia Tech, then at Cal, at No. 15 Louisville and home vs. Florida State. UM is presently favored in all four, yes, even on the road against its only ranked opponent. Cristobal predictably talks up how great Va. Tech is; “Best team that we have played thus far.” But the 2-2 Hokies have lost to Vanderbilt and Rutgers. Miami is favored by 16 1/2 points.

Still, have we not been here before, where strong starts fizzle? And this is college football. Did No. 5 Notre Dame not just lose to Northern Illinois?

The best Canes team in years, maybe in decades, coupled with a favorable schedule, makes a perfect season realistically possible. Yeah, you read that right. Now we see if this team can handle the pressure with expectations soaring.

UM has steamrolled past rival Florida (in Gainesville), Florida A&M, Ball State and South Florida by a combined 209-41. That’s the most points through four games and biggest victory margin in program history. Ward is the first Miami QB to have four straight 300 games to start a season in 25 years. Canes lead the nation of offensive plays of 15 or more yards.

History is watching.

Twenty-one years. That is how long it has been since Miami’s glory says ended. The last of five national championships was 2001, but I trace the last glory year to 2003, when the run of 11-plus-win seasons ended, when the last major bowl game was won, and when UM last finished ranked in the top five (or even top 10).

Cristobal — Miami-born, former champion Canes player, program historian — knows what he has now and he knows it in the broadest sense.

He has a team capable, finally, after two decades of program letdown, of lifting a fan base and giving it its swagger back.

Cristobal’s current players were born as the post-glory malaise set in and literally have been raised hearing how great The U used to be.

“They’ve had enough of all the stuff they’ve heard the past couple decades,” Cristobal says. “They have that positive anger, the right type of mad. It burns clean. It’s an endless supply of juice, and it’s real. There’s a standard. We haven’t achieved it yet. But our fans are witnessing a tremendous step for the program. And we intend to continue ascending.”

History also invites the caution and skepticism, though, because we have been here before.

Hopes dashed across the past couple of decades surely have some Canes fans “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” an idiom that means waiting for an event to occur that is negative and seemingly inevitable. (The cliche is traced to late 19th and early 20th century tenements in New York City, where bedrooms were built atop one another and you’d hear your upstairs neighbor take off their shoes and drop them on the floor.)

Last year Miami also started 4-0, including a win against ranked Texas A&M, but the Canes would finish 7-6.

In 2020 UM was 8-1 and ranked No. 9,. Fans loved Manny Diaz for a minute. Then came a 62-26 home loss to North Carolina, then a bowl loss, and Diaz was gone the next year.

In 2017 Mark Richt had the Canes 10-0 and ranked No. 2. Then came a loss to Pitt, a 38-3 loss to Clemson in the ACC Championship Game. and a loss in the Orange Bowl. (In 2016 Richt started 4-0, then lost four straight.)

In 2013 fans even loved Al Golden for a minute. Guys from the frats wore white dress shirts and orange ties to games just like Al. His Canes were 7-0 and ranked No. 7. Then they lost three straight games and four of the last six.

Cristobal’s current Canes are better than any of the above and it isn’t close. This season does feel different.

But the past 20 years tells us the proving is not over. It has only just begun.