PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. — Just moments after winning his first national championship at Florida, Urban Meyer remembers thinking to himself, as he was walking off the same very field he will play Clemson on Saturday in the Fiesta Bowl at the University of Phoenix Stadium, “Now it is time to coach for fun. That will be good.”

However, in his case, that was not true.

“It might be the furthest from the truth,” Meyer said on Friday during a joint press conference with Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney at the JW Marriott Camelback Resort & Spa in Paradise Valley. “The journey to build to it is accelerating, enthusiastic, energizing, and the biggest part is, and I said this the other day, I’m more cautious than ever about making sure it does not become that grind.”

Meyer, who has a 61-5 record in his five-plus seasons at Ohio State, says the grind gets worse the more and more successful a program becomes. The Buckeyes’ head coach admits trying to live up to those lofty expectations can wear on a coach, which is one reason he admits he left Florida after the 2010 season and stayed out of football for a year until Ohio State hired him in 2012.

“It’s real tough,” he said. “Dabo is going to experience that the more success he has. He has built this monster that he has to continue to feed and the same thing with me.”

At Clemson, Swinney has quietly built a Clemson program that has reeled off six straight 10 win seasons and is 68-13 during that span. The Tigers have won three ACC Championships  and played for the national championship last year, where it fell just short of beating Alabama in last year’s College Football Playoff.

This year, Clemson felt the pressure of getting back to the College Football Playoff. The Tigers, now a marked team because of their success, played in seven games that were decided by six points or less, and went 6-1 in those games.

“For us, we just try to stay focused on our core values,” Swinney said. “I’m constantly reminding our fan base to enjoy the journey. I know there is an expectation, but I really want to focus more and have an appreciation of our young players and what they do and how hard they work.

“We try to stay focused on that. We try to serve to our players’ hearts, not their talents. If we keep that focus, then we will continue to be about the right things.”

Swinney feels he has the right formula for success that can keep a winning culture for years to come.

He says winning is not his program’s No. 1 goal. He wants to win, but to him it is more about how they win, how they graduate players and how they change and impact their players’ lives while preparing them for what is next.

“Are they having a great experience? Are they excited to come back to Clemson? Do they have great relationships? It is a relationship-driven program,” Swinney said. “That is what we focus on and making sure we have fun.

“I don’t ever want to become a team or program that when we win … I always want to have an appreciation for how hard it is to win, and understand that sometimes you lose. That’s okay. Did we bust our butt? You are always growing. You are dealing with young people and the roster changes every year. You always start over.”

In other words, a program is never really on cruise control.

“If you have a lot of success, you just kind of assume things. You can’t do that,” Swinney said. “To me, you start over every year and you re-install your core values and who you are as a program and why. Maybe those seniors have heard it three times and they did get it all when they were freshmen, sophomores and juniors, but by the time they leave as a senior, they are telling the same stories. And 15 years later, they are repeating those stories. Well, they got it.

“I just think we have to stay committed, and for us it is making sure we stay focused on the right things.”

Meyer said he learned his lesson from his Florida experience, where it seemed winning 10 or 11 games and playing in the Sugar Bowl was never enough.

“I made a promise to myself, and more importantly to our players, that I will not let that happen to the best of our abilities,” he said.