Miami bought the best team in the ACC, but that doesn't guarantee its 1st conference title

After many false starts, it is safe to say that The U is finally back after Mario Cristobal led Miami to the national championship game last season. Now, the Hurricanes are entering the 2026 season with national title expectations. However, there’s one hurdle that the program, with its massive NIL-era spending sprees, still hasn’t been able to clear. 

This is probably a good time to remind people that Miami has never won the ACC title. It joined the league in 2004, three years removed from its most recent national championship, and has yet to raise the conference championship trophy. During that same span, Florida State has won it five times, and the Seminoles have 16 conference championships overall. 

Miami isn’t just coming off a deep College Football Playoff run; it’s spending more money on its roster than the rest of the league by a wide margin. That’s a gap that Florida State desperately needs to close. But in the meantime, rooting for the Hurricanes to trip up and for the ACC crown to evade them for one more year may even become the primary rooting interest for an FSU fanbase largely hoping for a fresh start. 

Miami has blown past the $40 million mark on its 2026 roster

Ahead of the 2026 season, Chris Hummer and John Talty of CBS Sports put together a list of the most expensive rosters in college football after polling 50 industry sources to find out who is putting their money where their mouth is. 

Miami checked in at No. 2 on the list, trailing only LSU, which seemingly gave Lane Kiffin a blank check after hiring him away from Mississippi. According to their reporting, no other ACC program came close to the $40 million mark, which seems to be the threshold for serious contention in the sport right now. 

The most important part of Cristobal’s turnaround in Coral Gables was his ability to activate a deep-pocketed but largely uninterested donor base. Tapping those resources was something Manny Diaz, his predecessor, simply could not do. So, Miami was spending near the top of the sport last year as well, but this time around, it had a major advantage. 

A consequence of Florida State’s joint lawsuit with Clemson against the ACC was that the ACC changed its revenue distribution for the College Football Playoff. Rather than share the payout from advancing to the next round with the entire league, the ACC gives all the CFP money to the program that earned it. That meant over $20 million for Miami, and an even wider gap between the league’s only serious contender and the other 16 teams. 

Armed with a restocked war chest, Cristobal plucked Darian Mensah and Cooper Barkate away from Duke, added Damon Wilson from Missouri, and won a hotly contested recruiting battle for five-star offensive tackle Jackson Cantwell. This year’s roster might be even better than the 2025 iteration, but will that be enough to win the ACC? 

All the pressure is on the Hurricanes and it may trip them up

This won’t be the first time that Miami is the most talented team in the ACC. It was last season, and probably in 2024 as well. Both times, it tripped over its own feet on the way to Charlotte and didn’t even appear in the ACC title game. So, what would be different about this year?

Well, the magnitude seems to be the biggest change. Sure, Miami had the most talent in the league before, but now it’s by a wider margin than ever before. Still, that doesn’t guarantee Cristobal is going to cash in on his excellent offseason. 

Maybe this is the last time FSU can ever gloat about Miami not having an ACC title. In which case, soak it in. But maybe not, and no matter how the season goes for the Seminoles, that will be like catnip for many FSU fans.

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