In a long race is slow and steady better than fast and reckless?

In the old folktale - "The tortoise and the hare", the tortoise wins because he doggedly sticks to his goal.  The moral of the story can be taken in quite a few ways but one I've grown to appreciate is that sometimes in life going slower is actually going faster.  Stonewall Jackson was a big proponent of this as he found that his men could march further if he had a mandatory rest of 10 minutes every hour.  Any NASCAR driver could tell you the same thing ... sometimes you need to go slow to go fast.

Jim Tressel was the epitome of slow and steady.  He was big on preparation and no one ever accused him of being hasty.  His idea of pressuring a player was firm discussions.  Compare that with Urban Meyer.  He's big on preparation too but moves with a manic passion you never saw with Coach Tressel.

Tressel's method develops team unity.  These players that are more confident in themselves and more likely to produce in crunch time.  I think these players have more fun as it is less pressure packed and a more family type atmosphere.  This is important in developing cohesion but giving players freedom to be adults isn't always a positive as we saw with the TAT5.

Urban's method creates better individual players.  Everyone pushes themselves to the limit all the time.  There is no time off.  There is no quit.  This is impossible to keep up forever and a good example is what happened at the end of Urban's tenure at Florida.  You could make a pretty good argument that Urban had pushed the program so hard for so long that a good portion of them players rebelled and he lost control of the program.  When that happened he knew it needed a reboot and frankly that was easier to accomplish with a new coach.  In effect, he fired himself.

No doubt either method can have great results.  The key is knowing when to push on the gas and when to apply the brake.  Urban says he's learned during his time off how to use the brake but the only thing for sure is the Ohio State program has currently got the pedal on the floor and is racing at full speed for the turn.

I'd really like to see obvious signs that Coach Meyer knows how to apply the brake in the next year or I really doubt his tenure will be any longer than what he was able to achieve at Florida.

Post note - This blog entry might be influenced by the fact the Daytona 500 was yesterday.