To Billy Donovan, it's poison.
To Roland Thornqvist, it's the kiss of death.
Jill Briles-Hinton is OK with talking about it.
Tim Walton discusses it freely.
The "it," of course, being whether or not you should talk about winning a national championship.
Should you talk about winning it all?
Then should you talk to the media about it?
Should you say, "We're going to take it one game at a time" until it's more natural than Tim Tebow running over linebackers?
Should you say, "If we don't beat those pieces of 'crap,' I won't be able to live with myself?"
I don't know.
And I'm not going to sit here and tell you in this 600-word space that I know more than collegiate coaches - some of whom have been doing this since I fell in love with the Pink Ranger when I was 7 years old.
I can sit here and second-guess these coaches' decisions, and sometimes that's part of my job. But not this time. This time it's simply asking, how do you handle championship pressures?
This is something nearly every UF coach faces.
Urban Meyer and Billy Donovan - you better believe they deal with it. Becky Burleigh and Mary Wise are expected to dominate not only the Southeastern Conference but also the national scene every year. Walton and Rhonda Faehn have built programs where not winning it all is a disappointment. Thornqvist - even if you don't know the UF women's tennis team from FSU's - is as dominant as you can be year in and year out. Andy Jackson, Gregg Troy and Mike Holloway have built programs that are near the top of the country every season. The same can be said for golf coaches Buddy Alexander and Briles-Hinton. Kevin O'Sullivan and Amanda Butler are on the right track, and they too will be leading very attractive programs soon.
Let's look at the reason why Meyer and Donovan succeeded with their squads.
1. They had players who knew more about each other than themselves. Al Horford knew what size socks Joakim Noah had, and probably several other unsanitary snippets I'm not imaginative enough to think of. Dallas Baker knew whether Jemalle Cornelius was a pepperoni or cheese guy.
That's step one. You're not teammates. You're friends. Cliché, but three national titles in two years speak for themselves.
2. They had role players. Cue Tebow, Chris Richard and Lee Humphrey. It's weird to think of Tebow as just a "role player," but that's exactly what he was for the 2006 championship squad. He was the let-me-slap-your-helmet-while-yelling-in-your-face sparkplug that Chris Leak wasn't.
The '04s were the stars, but it'd be interesting to see if they would even have had that nickname if Humphrey and Richard hadn't played their roles perfectly.
See, the real issue isn't how the coaches do this - it's how the athletes react to being told they need to do this.
Donovan hasn't gone after every O.J. Mayo and Derrick Rose, begging them to attend a class every now and again and play a few games for one year. Donovan's actually built a team. Meyer and Donovan don't just recruit athletes - they recruit personalities.
Then it's up to the players to figure out if they're championship caliber. You bring in championship players, and you are capable of winning championships. You can know the Xs and Os of your sport front to back and have a certain degree of success with it. But if your athletes aren't gifted or determined enough to come together and execute, you're not going anywhere.
If you have a coach who understands how to blend personalities, then you have a complete team. And I haven't seen any incomplete teams wearing championship T-shirts recently.
