FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Early Wednesday morning, both Florida coach Urban Meyer and Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops met with the media for the last time prior to today’s 7:30 p.m. BCS national championship kickoff.

It was probably nothing one or the other hadn’t said before, though a few interesting nuggets always seem to drop.

Neither one believes he’ll coach forever. Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno will always have them on longevity.

Back in Gainesville, Meyer gets the family involved around the football offices the same way Stoops has welcomed family around the Switzer Center.

Both seem to think the Sooner defense has been given short shrift since arriving in South Florida. And both appear to have an affinity for the other. Before they knew each other very well, Meyer was looking for career advice.

“Everything I (had) heard about Bob Stoops is why I kind of entrusted a phone call to him four or five years ago,” he said. “Not because the relationship was that tight, it was just because I kind of admired what he did.”

They’re all good stories and nice thoughts. If nothing else, it’s nice to know two apparent good men will be leading their teams into Dolphin Stadium tonight. And it’s nice to think, win or lose, such a thought could be pervasive. Because, win or lose, Meyer and Stoops seem to be much of what’s right about college football.

The cold hard truth is very different. The cold hard truth is it’s about who wins and who loses.

Because if Florida wins, Meyer becomes what Stoops was once upon a time and what Pete Carroll has been since Southern Cal won an AP and consensus national championship back-to-back (the same two seasons Stoops’ Sooners lost the BCS championship game at the Sugar and Orange Bowls). He becomes the best, most fantastic and celebrated coach in all of college sports.

For OU, it’s about what would be lost.

The Sooners fell short their last two national championship games and in their last four BCS bowl games. The last quarterback to win any bowl game for OU was Rhett Bomar and the last time the Sooners won a game in January was the 2003 Rose Bowl.

It’s only the national championship they’re playing for tonight and yet it might be the undercard for the Sooners, who have spent the week defending their defense and who will be looked upon as college football’s hardly-ever-ready-for-prime-time-players should they lose handily or, perhaps, lose at all.

Don’t think for a second Florida opening a 3-point favorite and the line heading toward 5 the day before the game doesn’t have a whole lot to do with previous Sooner big-stage flops. A lot more, anyway, than DeMarco Murray being unavailable.

It was similar in January 2004 when OU, bandied about as maybe the college game’s best ever team, first fell shamefully to Kansas State at the Big 12 title game and, having backed in to the national title game, lost the Sugar Bowl to LSU.

OU went from being famously fantastic to famously fraudulent. The Sooners are still trying to get their good name back.