The last three teams to lose the national championship game all collapsed the next year — TCU went 5-7, Washington 6-7, and Notre Dame missed the playoff entirely. Now it's Miami's turn in that chair. So is the hangover coming? I dug into what actually causes it, and why Mario Cristobal might be the one coach built to beat it. Here's the thing nobody's saying: the championship hangover isn't a curse, it's math. It comes down to three things — the coach, the quarterback, and the core. Every runner-up that collapsed lost most of them. Every one that bounced back kept them. I run Miami through all three, break down the Ward → Beck → Mensah portal QB pipeline, and explain why Cristobal's own career — two Miami title teams as a player, four years inside Saban's Alabama — makes him the exception, not the next victim. The Echevarria Law Firm — proud t ...