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Lasting Legacy For Tonight's BCS Winner

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By JOE HENDERSON

jhenderson@tampatrib.com

Published: January 8, 2009

Updated: 01/08/2009 12:56 am

MIAMI - There are many reasons to follow college football, but tradition is one of the most compelling. The faces and players change from year to year, but they all share memories that endure, whether they are Gators, Sooners, or from any other school you want to name.

So it is tonight when Florida and Oklahoma meet in the BCS Championship Game. You can fault the way these teams were selected to play a single game and call it a national title, but this game is for legacies as much as for the crystal trophy that goes to the winner. Such are the stakes.

Both programs are among the most dominating in the land, even in this era of parity. Both coaches, Urban Meyer and Bob Stoops, are on their way toward careers that one day could equal legends like Bowden, Paterno, Woody and the Bear - men who cast such long shadows, they need only one name.

The winning coach will be the first two-time BCS champion, and the ramifications will echo for decades. The winners earn more than the right to hold a single index finger aloft. They become the "it" program with the "it" coach - better than Southern Cal, better than Texas, better than anyone at any place.

Meyer got here by being relentless on details and focused on building consensus with his team. It is quite remarkable, really. They have problems like any other program, but he mostly finds players who buy what he is selling - academics, football and family - and makes sure they live it.

Somebody asked him about the whole "first coach to win two titles" idea. You won't be surprised at his answer.

"Well, it's very humbling when you start thinking of all the great head coaches out there and great coaching staffs," he said. "Other than that, I just worry about third-down-and-6 and make sure our punting is ready to go."

He does, too. That's how he got here.

Knew He Wanted To Coach

Coaching is Meyer's calling. It always seems to be that way for guys like this. He recalled Wednesday attending his first college game at Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati, watching the UC Bearcats play Wichita State.

He was 8 or 9 years old at the time, a kid from small-town Ashtabula, Ohio, with saucer-sized eyes. Once he got inside that stadium, he knew what he wanted to do.

"We were walking by the sideline, and I still to this day remember saying, 'I want to be a coach' - watching what was going on the sideline," Meyer said. "I did not have goals set out - by this time I want to do this, this, this and this. I wanted to coach football, and I knew that at a very early age, even when I was taking a baseball route for a while. I knew at some point I would want to be involved in football."

Once he established himself as a head coach - at Bowling Green, then Utah - it was inevitable he would wind up at a big-boy school. Most people thought it would be Notre Dame. Imagine how awake the echoes would be if he had taken that job instead of going to Florida four years ago.

Meyer wants to do more than coach at this level, though. He is driven to win, and Florida represented his best chance to do that consistently.

True, no school has tradition like Notre Dame, but Steve Spurrier showed how to harness the potential that was always there at Florida. Now, Meyer is building the Gators into a colossus. And creating tradition.

On Top Of It All

I'm not sure anyone will equal Florida State's run of 14 consecutive top-five finishes, but Meyer has the Gators in a position to be the dominant program of its era. Oklahoma is on a similar track under Stoops; this is the Sooners' fourth trip to the BCS title game during his reign.

They decide championships every year, but it feels different this time.

Years from now they'll talk about how Tim Tebow and the Gators played Sam Bradford and Oklahoma for the national title. They'll celebrate the outcome in film, in story, and in the telling and retelling of the tale.

The winning team will be in a place few ever get to go because this is for more than just a title. The winning team tonight will join the greats. They won't put that on a trophy, but, trust me, everybody will just know.

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