EUGENE -- In the days before the 1998 Micron PC Bowl, Mario Cristobal boarded a boat cruise in the waters off of south Florida as a first-year graduate assistant at Miami.
He disembarked as a newly hired U.S. Secret Service agent.
In between was this: A message on Cristobal's pager, informing him that after a nearly two-year process of applications, testing and a background check so thorough he'd heard from people he hadn't seen in 15 years, he had the job.
"It was time to go in the Secret Service," said Cristobal, the Oregon Ducks' co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, last week in his Hatfield-Dowlin Complex office. "I was gone. I was out the door."
But first, there were emotional goodbyes with Hurricanes players, a fitful night of sleep and a difficult choice that changed his life.
Unwilling to leave football, Cristobal has since become one of the college game's most in-demand coaches after helping rebuild Miami into a national power, turn Florida International from a doormat into a conference champion and win a national title at Alabama before arriving at Oregon in January.
Every coach can tell stories about the path not taken at the crossroads of their career. Safeties coach Keith Heyward once sold Toyotas. Former UO coach Mark Helfrich planned to become an orthopedic surgeon, and former offensive coordinator Matt Lubick was going to be a dentist. Each eventually was bit by the coaching bug.
But few have a what-if as unusual as Cristobal, the ace recruiter who can claim to have once been pursued hard by the Secret Service. Instead of protecting a president in anonymity, his job now involves coaching the offensive line, the most unglamorous of position groups, to keep quarterbacks and running backs safe.
You don't have to tell him that there's a connection there.
"All you're doing is serving, serving, serving, protecting," he said.
A Secret Service spokesperson said the agency could not comment on past applicants, but those who knew Cristobal during his graduate assistant days at Miami from 1998-2000 remember him pondering the decision, only to build a career he says he has followed with no regrets.
"The rumor was he was going to go into that because I guess he's off-the-charts intelligent," said Ty Wise, a starting center on the 1998 team. "When he came back, we were all kind of fired up."
"I do remember that he was debating about it," said Butch Davis, Miami's coach during Cristobal's three seasons as a graduate assistant. "I kind of tried to tell guys you got to follow your heart. Whether you're a player or a coach, a GA or quality control guys, there comes a point in time that you have to start making a decision -- is coaching going to be a career for me?
"The answer that I've shared with all of them, and I'm sure I probably told Mario the same thing is, can you live without it?"
Cristobal's answer was no, because football had already been taken away from him once before.
After growing up in Miami and winning national titles in 1989 and 1991 as a Hurricanes offensive lineman, Cristobal was cut by the Denver Broncos before playing two seasons in Amsterdam in NFL Europe from 1995-96.
He came to terms with the end of his playing career on a "painful" flight home from Europe. Then he began plotting out his future.
He worked part-time at a public relations agency during the day and at a Miami Beach lounge at night to keep himself afloat. Some nights, he said, he'd leave the club and sneak in a few hours of sleep in his car before going to grad school at Miami. He had practiced judo as a child, and in his mid-20s competed seriously on the weekends around south Florida in mixed martial arts and jiu jitsu tournaments.
In the background, he'd begun the rigorous, nearly two-year long application process to the Secret Service. Cristobal had always felt a tug toward law enforcement. His grandfather, father and brother had all worked in the profession; before his father became a Cuban exile in the early 1960s, Cristobal said he worked "on the good side" in the Cuban national police. Part of the appeal of the Secret Service was the possibility of opening doors to other agencies, from the Department of Defense, to the FBI, or DEA.
Current applicants must pass an entry exam, two rounds of interviews, a polygraph test and a background investigation, a spokesperson for the agency said.
During one test at the service's Miami field office, Cristobal said he was given one minute to study a blown-up snapshot of a busy four-way intersection, before it was taken away and the questions began. Football film study felt easy, by comparison.
"What was the year, color and make of the car going northbound on Broadway?" Cristobal recalled. "Was the driver male or female, what age range, hair color, were they wearing glasses or a hat, were the windows down or open? White-wall tires or 22s? It was a whole different level."
Meanwhile, he was still attending Miami games where, by the mid-1990s, the Hurricanes had slumped into a program no longer competing for national titles. Influenced by his coaches at Miami's Christopher Columbus High -- he still consults with a few today -- and hoping to help return Miami to prominence, Cristobal felt football's pull again.
"When you've coached as long as I have, I've seen GAs and you say, you know what? This guy's going to be spectacular," said Davis, now the coach at Florida International. "He had a mission when he went on the field with the players. He knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish. I thought, if this is his career path, he's going to be successful."
Working with Miami Hall of Fame offensive line coach Art Kehoe, Cristobal was a "grinder" who was excellent at analyzing film, said Wise, the Hurricanes center who later worked as an assistant strength coach during Cristobal's first season at FIU, in 2007. He also arrived with instant credibility.
"We all had a ton of respect for Mario because he had a ring or two," he said. "He has basically already accomplished what we were all trying to get."
Nineteen years after he helped Wise in the film room, Ducks linemen also describe Cristobal as ultra-intense, saying they've woken up to texts from their coach with messages such as "get ready to pound some people today!"
He loves professional wrestling, specifically Ric Flair, and still works 16-hour days, fueled by Cuban coffee his mother still mails him from Miami. Married with two sons in elementary school, a four-hour night of sleep is about normal.
"There's a special feeling you get when you play football," he said. "I'm addicted to football and teaching. I mean, completely and utterly obsessed, like a sickness. Gotta have it, gotta do it. It's like, what's your hobby? Football. What do you do in your spare time? I throw footballs to my sons."
Upon arriving at UO last winter, he shared with Ducks linemen the story of his path not taken. Several said they didn't doubt his account a bit.
"I see it," left guard Shane Lemieux said. "I definitely see it. He's really intense and always talks about law enforcement."
In hindsight, the choice was obvious. Cristobal has an ability to look someone in the eye and make them feel like the most important person in the room, and has used it to recruit five-star players and develop road-graders like Outland Trophy winner Cam Robinson, at Alabama.
But the night Cristobal received his page, after he'd said his goodbyes to Miami players and coaches, he went home and was torn.
He'd always envisioned a career in law enforcement ... but the ache from his flight home from NFL Europe had returned.
"Couldn't fall asleep until 2 in the morning, but woke up three hours later in a complete and utter panic -- and not for any other reason than there's a special feeling you get when you play football," he said.
He drove to Miami's football offices and asked for his GA job back.
Then he made another drive. At Miami's Secret Service field office, he turned down the offer of a nice salary and security for two more years of low-level pay as a grad assistant. His family thought he was crazy.
"It was like wow, you already pictured your life without football once already," he said. "You're about to go through it again. How do you feel about that? I was like, uh, I'm not letting it go this time. The rough part was informing the members of the Secret Service, who were so gracious. ... I went 100 percent with heart and gut."
Sometimes, he allows, he checks in with friends who followed the Secret Service path. Yet he says he isn't wistful for what could have been had he followed them.
Maybe he'd have worked a protection detail for a sitting president. Turns out, football brought Cristobal to D.C., anyway.
In the spring of 2016, Cristobal was an Alabama assistant celebrating the Tide's College Football Playoff national championship at the White House when he spotted an old friend.
It was a Secret Service agent he'd had met during his application process. And their greeting -- "I was like, 'what's up man!'" -- caught the attention of Alabama players.
"All my players were like, 'I knew you were some kind of special agent!'" Cristobal said. "I'd have 20 years in right now if I would have gone. Probably could have retired."
At this, he paused and rose from his seat in his office. Reaching high into a coat closet, he grabbed a shiny black box and opened it to reveal three diamond-encrusted rings from that championship Alabama season, commemorating the Tide's SEC title, CFP appearance and CFP title.
Each the size of an egg, they glitter in the light.
"I'm OK, though," he said of his choice. "I wouldn't have these."
-- Andrew Greif
agreif@oregonian.com
@andrewgreif