Steve Cannon / AP

After urban Meyer won Florida a national championship in 2006, the school rewarded him with a six-year extension worth $3.2 million a year. Columnist Mike Celizic says Florida should be prepared to do whatever it takes to keep Meyer around for the long haul.

You see it in the peripatetic nature of the business these days. Coaches, especially the younger ones, hop around a lot. Saban is 57 and has worked as an assistant coach in eight cities, and he’s on his fifth head coaching job, having bailed out on both Miami and LSU before landing in Alabama.

Meyer is 44 and has made four stops as an assistant and is on his third head coaching job. And Florida is very aware that success doesn’t keep a great coach around, having lost Steve Spurrier, who coached the Gators to their last title in 1996, to the pros, where he could make more money and gain more fame. When it turned out he couldn’t coach in the pros, he came back to South Carolina, and if a better job — or better-paying one — pops up somewhere, he’ll move on.

Florida was darned lucky to snag Meyer just a few years after Spurrier left. Alabama went from 1979, when Bear Bryant won his last title, to 1992, when Gene Stallings won one, without a championship. Then Stallings ruined it by getting nailed for NCAA violations that wiped out the results of the team’s 1993 season. After he left, it took until this year and Saban for the school to return to prominence.

Given the amount of alumni and community pride that’s wrapped up in college football and the revenue the sport provides for the rest of the athletic program, you can see why Alabama will probably do just about anything to keep him there.

It could backfire. Notre Dame gave Weis a 10-year contract extension worth a fortune based on half of his first season. The move wasn’t as stupid as it looks. The Irish thought they had their stud coach and they did what every school had better do in that situation: They locked him up for a long time to come. They had the right idea but the wrong man.

Florida and Alabama also have the right idea — and the right men. Now all they have to do is keep them.

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