With the upcoming retirement of Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, we wrote Tuesday that USF coach Jim Leavitt will become the dean of head football coaches in the state of Florida. What seems more impressive is that in terms of the longest continuous tenure at their current school, Leavitt will rank fourth out of 120 Division I-A coaches when Bowden retires after FSU's bowl game.

The only coaches with a longer run than Leavitt's 13 seasons? Penn State's Joe Paterno, of course, is finishing his 44th season, followed by Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer (23 seasons) and Troy's Larry Blakeney (19 seasons).

Fresno State's Pat Hill, like Leavitt, started his current coaching stint with the 1997 season, but Leavitt was hired in December 1995, a full year before Hill was hired at Fresno. Two asterisks worth noting are Kansas State coach Bill Snyder, who is in his 18th season but retired in 2006 and returned this season, and Nevada's Chris Ault, who is in his 25th season at Nevada, but took eight years off from 1996-2003.

In the past two years, six other coaches who had been ahead of Leavitt in terms of coaching longevity have dropped off the list -- Michigan's Lloyd Carr, Tennessee's Phil Fulmer, Oregon's Mike Bellotti, Colorado State's Sonny Lubick, Southern Miss' Jeff Bowers and Northern Illinois' Joe Novak. Purdue's Joe Tiller had been coaching since the 1997 season, like Leavitt.

Who else in college football can boast 10 seasons at their current school? After the top five we mentioned (Paterno, Beamer, Blakeney, Leavitt and Hill), there is Texas' Mack Brown (12 seasons), Iowa's Kirk Ferentz, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, Connecticut's Randy Edsall (11 each) and Texas Tech's Mike Leach (10).