Gus Malzahn, Jimbo Fisher try to make it business as usual

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Their schools have been on this stage before, but they haven't.

Florida State played in the first three BCS championship games, and won one of them, when Bobby Bowden was the coach.

Auburn played in one, and won it, three years ago, when Gene Chizik was the coach.

Monday night at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena those two schools will play for the 16th and final BCS championship, and the focus will be on two 48-year-old head coaches who are, relatively speaking, rookies.

Jimbo Fisher, in his fourth year as a head coach (all at Florida State), and Gus Malzahn, in his second year as a head coach (his first at Auburn), have never stood on a football field in charge of trying to lead their teams to a national college championship.

How will they handle themselves?

No one, not even them, knows for sure.

"I'm trying my best to enjoy the moment, but the bottom line is we've got a job to do, and as a coach your responsibility is to have your team prepared as possible and to stay in that routine, and in this setting this week, obviously that's a challenge," Malzahn told reporters Sunday. "But our team and our coaches have done that all year, and I feel so far up to this point as a group we've done that."

Fisher said the biggest challenge of the long layoff since his team routed Duke 45-7 in the ACC title game on Dec. 7 has been keeping emotions in check and trying to peak at the right time — Monday night.

When game time arrives, Fisher said, "I'll rely on my experiences in the past and the folks that I've been around and the things that I believe. We have a core belief system of how I want things done and it's worked all year ... and we'll do the same things. To me, whether it's the national championship game or the opening game of the year, it's still a football game. Our routine will stay exactly the same, and hopefully we'll do very well."

Malzahn said he will stick to his game day routine of rising early and watching film with offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Rhett Lashlee and offensive graduate assistant coach Kodi Burns.

"We'll try to go over and make sure we're not missing anything, try to look at each situation that can possibly come up in the game and have an answer," Malzahn said.

Fisher might spend some time perusing his scouting reports on Malzahn, who calls Auburn's offense, and Ellis Johnson, a veteran SEC coach who is Auburn's defensive coordinator.

"We have a lot of guys on our staff that have played against Gus for a long time," Fisher said. "They know a lot of his high school roots, a lot of people he was around and things he did. I keep a running record of all the guys we've played against and books on all the guys we've played against for the last 10, 15 years. We've got a running record of all those guys, and we check all that stuff."

Though they've never been the boss in a title effort, both coaches have been vitally important in previous BCS championships. Fisher was offensive coordinator under head coach Nick Saban when LSU won the BCS title in 2003. Malzahn was offensive coordinator under Chizik when Auburn won the national championship in 2011.

But the one thing Fisher or Malzahn can't see on film or on a scouting report is how his counterpart handles himself as the head coach with a national championship on the line.

Nobody will know that — not even them — until Monday night.

USA TODAY