They are the avant garde, yet they are as old school as the Ohio steel mills.

They are the head coaches of college football's grandest exposition, the national championship game, and they are not unlike the ocean waves that shape the nearby beaches: constant, relentless and unchanging.

Oklahoma's Bob Stoops and Florida's Urban Meyer are on anyone's short list of the game's contemporary lions. Each already owns a national championship. Each commands more than $3 million a year. Each walks with a disposition that is direct and sincere, yet terse and never yielding.

Not as bonfire-and-guitar as USC's Pete Carroll, not as in-your-face as Alabama's Nick Saban, not as highwater-and-thick lenses as Penn State's Joe Paterno, Stoops and Meyer are cut from the same down-the-middle cloth, as Upper Midwest and as blue collar as a million-dollar celebrity can get.

“Two of the most driven guys I've ever been around in college football,” said Gators assistant Dan McCarney. “Just unbelievable. Just unbelievable drive to win and to be successful and to do it the right way.”

McCarney is in his first year working for Meyer as a defensive line coach, but for four years, he helped tutor Stoops when Stoops was an overachieving defensive safety at Iowa under hall of fame coach Hayden Fry, and later worked alongside a young coach Stoops.

“What I learned from Hayden and I see in Urban and I see in Bobby Stoops,” McCarney said, “you have a great plan, you lay out everybody's responsibility, and then you have a lot of faith and trust in 'em and let 'em go do it, so it's not micromanage every day,” McCarney said. “You hire good people, you trust 'em, you give 'em a job to do and they'd damn sure better to it, and do it right. It works, and it's a great formula.”

McCarney, the former Iowa State head coach, also admires how Stoops and Meyer's truest passion.

“They're family guys,” McCarney said. “They love their families, they love their players, and they love their players' families. It always sounds good, but some head coaches don't live it that way.”

These two do. It's less frequent than it used to be, but the Sooner coaches still have Family Night, where everyone's wives and kids come to the Switzer Center for food and fellowship.

Meyer does the same thing in Gainesville.

“He brings his kids around four or five night a week,” said Butch Rowley, a special teams player who knew Meyer when he was a Notre Dame assistant under hall of famer Lou Holtz and later walked on at Utah and then Florida. “On Thursday nights, it's called Family Dinners, all the wives and all the kids and families come down and we have dinner.”

Their commitment to family and to team goes far beyond just weekly gatherings.

OU senior Manuel Johnson was knocked out of a game during his sophomore year and taken to a Norman hospital. Stoops was there just minutes after the game.

“He came up there to see me, brought me some snacks and everything. He cared about me,” Johnson said. “He came up there and sat for a while with my family. I really appreciated that, and my family appreciated that.”

Meyer, 44, grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio. Stoops, 48, grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. Both attended Catholic high schools. They both played defensive back in college, Meyer at Cincinnati and Stoops at Iowa.

Meyer understudied at Ohio State, Illinois State and Notre Dame. He was head coach at Bowling Green from 2001-02 and at Utah from 2003-04. Stoops was an aide at Iowa, Kent State, Kansas State and Florida before taking over in Norman in 1999.

“Where he grew up, up in Ashtabula, is about an hour from my home in Youngstown,” Stoops said. “In fact, we used to load a couple cars up and a bunch of our family would meet a bunch of our extended family, cousins, and we'd vacation on Geneva-on-the-Lake, which is about a mile from where Urban grew up.”

They both won a national championship in their second season at their current school, Meyer in 2006 and Stoops in 2000.

When Stoops spurned interest in Florida's vacancy in 2004, the school turned to Meyer. Meyer turned to Stoops.

“He called me and he wanted an unbiased opinion just about the job,” Stoops said. “Heck, you know, I talked him into taking it. I should've – I'd have been better off not. Nah, I'm just kidding.”

At media day Monday for the BCS national title game, OU assistants Jay Norvell and Brent Venables reminisced about Stoops then and now, as a Hawkeye in 1982 and as the Sooners' commander in 2000. Norvell, who was Stoops' backup at Iowa, recounted Stoops playing his senior year with a broken foot and hitting a Purdue receiver so hard one time he broke the Boilermaker's jaw and knocked himself out.

Venables looked around Dolphin Stadium trying to recall certain plays from OU's 13-2 national title victory over Florida State.

“It was on that sideline. First play of the game. Plus-35 (yards),” Venables said. “Like, our whole game plan – 'Oh, God, no!' – no, really, trust me. First thing Bob says is, 'Settle down, we're all right, we're all right.' Which is Bob to a tee, you know.”

Said Norvell, “I've been incredibly impressed with his patience and his control. And he's as competitive as anybody, now. As a coach, things don't always go the way you want them to go. But the true testament of a leader is to be composed in those situations and make the right decisions and the right adjustments. He's always been that way.”