No. 7 Miami opens the season with a cross-country trip to face Stanford

STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — No. 7 Miami got an early start to its first road trip of the 2026 season.

The Hurricanes flew out two days earlier than usual on Tuesday for a rare trip to California where they will take on Atlantic Coast Conference rival Stanford in their season opener on Friday night.

The game against the Cardinal (1-0) will be the eighth regular season contest ever for Miami in California and the team's only scheduled trip out of the Eastern time zone this season.

Coach Mario Cristobal's staff consulted with NFL teams and others that make more frequent cross-country trips to figure out the best way to handle it. The Hurricanes will use a similar approach to what they did before traveling to the Fiesta Bowl last season for the playoff semifinal against Mississippi.

“The sports science guys, they definitely do a great job of getting us prepared, our bodies and the nutrition and things that we have to take in order for that," running back Mark Fletcher said. "But at the end of the day, the message that Cristobal gives us is just taking that mindset, taking our Miami culture with us, packing it on the airplane with us to be able to face great opponents like Stanford. So now, we’re going to be mentally and physically ready to go.”

The game is a sort of homecoming for new Hurricanes quarterback Darian Mensah, who grew up a few hours away near California's Central Coast. Mensah transferred from Duke to Miami after last season.

Mensah led all power conference quarterbacks last season with 3,973 yards passing and was second to Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza with 34 touchdown passes. While he's happy to get the chance to play in front of friends and family, his focus is on the Cardinal.

“I’m going back home to California," he said. "Have some people out there, but the goal is to go 1-0. It’s a business trip.”

For the Cardinal, this game is a good measuring stick early in new coach Tavita Pritchard's tenure. Stanford has lost 18 of its last 19 games against ranked opponents and hasn't beaten a team in the top 10 of the AP poll since beating third-ranked Oregon 31-24 in overtime in 2021 when Cristobal was the Ducks coach.

“They are all opportunities to find out who we are,” Pritchard said. “That first week was an opportunity to find out who we were and we did. We learned stuff about ourselves, which will position us this week to learn even more.”

Mensah will make his first Miami start and seek to extend a winning streak by those in that role.

Each of the last seven quarterbacks to make their Miami debut -- D’Eriq King in 2020, Tyler Van Dyke in 2021, Jake Garcia and Jacurri Brown in 2022, Emory Williams in 2023, Cam Ward in 2024 and Carson Beck last year -- all led the Hurricanes to a win.

Mensah also won his debuts as starter for Tulane in 2024 and Duke last year. He went a combined 37 of 46 for 594 yards in those wins, with five touchdown passes and no interceptions.

Transfer quarterback Davis Warren had a strong debut for the Cardinal in the win against Hawaii. He threw for a career-high 310 yards and a touchdown with no turnovers and led the game-winning drive. Warren looked far more comfortable as a passer than he did when he played for Michigan in 2024.

“Davis was efficient throughout the day,” Pritchard said, “He did a nice job with his eyes, making his way through progressions and finding the open guy. When it really counted, he did a nice job of punching that ball in to take the lead back.”

Saturday is the traditional day for college football. The Miami schedule-makers evidently forgot that.

Miami’s final three games last season in the College Football Playoff were played on a Wednesday, a Thursday and a Monday -- and its first three games this season will be played on a Friday, a Thursday and then another Friday.

Excluding the COVID-affected season in 2020, the last FBS team to open with three consecutive non-Saturday games was Wake Forest in 2019. The Demon Deacons had three straight Friday night games to open that schedule and went 3-0 in that stretch.

AP Sports Writer Tim Reynolds in Miami contributed to this report

Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here , visit the Top 25 here and see AP’s full college football coverage here