As a cultural anthropologist by training, I must confess that these arguments drive me up a tree. There is not a football coach in the country that has a clue what culture truly is. The concepts to which they allude barely even scratch the surface, let alone the breadth, of what culture entails. Culture, by definition, is far more than a small cluster of specific core values shared by members of a particular group. In a best-case scenario, coaches try to establish the athletic equivalent of military esprit de corps, a “feeling of loyalty and pride that is shared by the members of a group who consider themselves to be different from other people in some special way.”
Conceptually, the constituent elements of culture are so numerous and all-encompassing that cultural anthropologists have never adopted a singular definition that is universally agreed upon. Nevertheless, the definition advanced by the pioneering English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in 1871 remains highly illustrative. Tylor said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."
Having said that, Tylor’s definition didn’t address material culture at all. The devices that we use to communicate with each other on this forum, the clothes that we wear, the vehicles that we drive, the tools that we use and, on the athletic field, the various implements used in competition, training and components worn by the Big Orange all qualify as falling under the umbrella of material culture, as opposed to the ideational traits that Tylor emphasized.
Language, however, is ultimately the communication medium through which all other cultural traits emerge and evolve over time.
With respect, however, to the comparison made in the original post, Heupel’s approach is the most conducive to sustained long-term success, all other things being equal in terms of player recruitment and development.
