History wears white socks this season.

It does parlor tricks on national television.

It says things that would get a less-adored speaker thrown to the politically correct police for sentencing.

You know history as Joe Paterno, Lou Holtz and Bobby Bowden. But you probably won't know them as coaches for much longer, which is one of the things that makes this fall so compelling.

When will we next see two coaches (Penn State's Paterno and Florida State's Bowden) destined to break the Division I-A record for career victories in the same season?

When will we see them joined by the only coach in history (Holtz) to lead six programs to bowl games?

How about never?

"There will be somebody come along," said LaVell Edwards who retired last season after 29 years at Brigham Young, "but there won't be that whole crew of them, the whole lot."

Bobby Bowden has won at least 10 games for 14 consecutive seasons.(Allsport)

In the past year, five of the top nine winningest active coaches retired, resigned or were fired. Yet, in the new millennium, the game has been left not to the young and the restless but to wise old heads.

Paterno (322), Bowden (315) and Holtz (224) are 1-2-3 in victories among active coaches. That's a combined 89 years, 75 bowl games and five national titles worth of experience. And they aren't about to stop anytime soon.

"What is youth?" said Holtz, a national coach of the year candidate in 2000 at age 63. "I'd rather have my experience than my youth."

Twenty-nine seasons of experience allowed Holtz to reach back for his ol' fastball once more, transforming South Carolina from an 0-11 laughingstock to 8-4 in 2000. The 7 1/2-game turnaround was the best in SEC history and fourth-best in Division I-A history.

Bowden, a Southern gentleman coach, has built a modern dynasty, winning two championships while winning at least 10 games for 14 straight seasons.

Paterno is the conscience of the game. He has been in State College for a half century, 35 years as head coach, completing five undefeated seasons and winning two national titles. Standing on the brink of history, all Paterno can see are his trademark white socks, not Bear Bryant's legacy of 323 career victories, which he'll match with his first victory this season.

"I learned from Coach Bryant that I wasn't as good a coach as I thought I was," said Paterno in typical self-deprecation.

"I really believe that when Joe hangs 'em up he might go down as tops," Bowden once said. "I'm talking, we can go back to Rockne, we can go back to my idol, Bear Bryant, go back to Bob Neyland.

"Go back to all the greats. Joe might be the guy everybody looks to because -- to me, Joe has done everything right. He graduates players, he's articulate and his character is impeccable."

Their ages are both a tribute to their accomplishments and a reason to think their success isn't going to stop any time soon.

Paterno, 74, is two victories away from breaking Bear Bryant's Division I-A victory mark. Bowden, 71, is only nine victories away. Both have contracts that run through 2004.

Holtz, now 64, is just beginning at South Carolina after previously leading William & Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas, Minnesota and Notre Dame to bowl games. Holtz recently joined the millionaires' club with a $175,000 raise that bumped his salary to $1.049 million for the next five years.

They're the exceptions ... with only a handful of coaches around the country lasting more than a decade in the increasingly rugged profession of running a major-college program.

"It just don't look like it because of the signs of the times," Bowden said. "We're firing coaches too quick. It's so inflexible compared to what it used to be. I just don't know if coaches will stay with it as long. I've been around 47 years. Joe's been longer than me."

In the past, the game's most successful coaches came along as if a relay team, not all at once. Pop Warner, No. 4 on the all-division victories list, ended his career 20 years before Bear Bryant (No. 3 on the list) even started.

South Carolina's Lou Holtz turned around the Gamecocks last season.(Allsport)

All-time victories leader Eddie Robinson started in 1941 at Grambling. That was five years before Amos Alonzo Stagg, sixth all-time with 314 victories, ended his career.

But this trio is a convergence as harmonic as the new millennium. Thing is, the old ways still work best for this Odd Trio.

Paterno and Bowden are in position to push the Bear to third place in Division I-A by the end of the season. Paterno is trying to rebound from a 5-7 season, the worst in his career. College football was poised to celebrate Bryant's record falling in 2000, but the Penn State season deteriorated into one filled with controversy and injury.

It was JoePa's first season in 33 without defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. Starting quarterback Rashard Casey had the shadow of a possible felony indictment hanging over him. Brilliant defenders Courtney Brown and LaVar Arrington had departed early for the NFL. The team was no doubt effected by the spinal injury to Adam Taliaferro.

"Somebody gets injured and somebody doesn't pan out or freak things happen and they say, 'Oh, the game has passed them by. We need to get a younger guy in there,' " Holtz said. "That's what happened to Joe Paterno last year. It's one of those years, but I guarantee you he'll be back ... he's the best coach on the sideline during a game."

As for Bowden, his only tough year at Florida State was, well, maybe the first one. He had his only losing record at FSU in 1976 -- 5-6 -- but even the Bear must have known a storm was gathering back in Bowden's first season in Tallahassee.

"He came down here to spend a couple of days with us and play golf," Bowden said. "We were trying to get a game with him and he wouldn't give us one. The year before this job came open, 'Bama beat Florida State 8-7 on a last-second field goal. He said, 'We might play you again, but it won't be in my time.'"

And it never was. Bryant passed away six years later at the time Bowden was starting one of college football's most amazing dynasties.

Bowden, born and raised in Birmingham, was once a likely candidate to get caught in Bryant's huge shadow. He played quarterback for the Crimson Tide as a freshman then transferred to Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham. He didn't go far for his first assistant coaching job -- Howard.

"The limitless of your mind could possibly see being head coach at Howard College one day," Bowden said. "That's probably as far as you could think. Eventually I became head coach there.

Joe Paterno has been a head coach for 35 years.(Allsport)

"Then it was, 'Hold it, I might want to move up to a bigger range.' I didn't know I'd end up at West Virginia and I didn't know I'd end up at Florida State. I always thought I'd end up at Alabama or Auburn."

Son Tommy Bowden is a budding coaching star at Clemson. Another son, Terry, was one of the winningest coaches in Auburn history -- before recently becoming an ABC analyst. Jeff Bowden replaced Mark Richt during the offseason as Florida State's offensive coordinator.

"When he hired me, I was a graduate assistant," said Richt, who finally left the nest after 13 years to become head coach at Georgia. "But he gave me the quarterbacks responsibility. I think he came to the first meeting and kind of followed me around the first practice.

"After that he never came to another meeting. What better way to motivate a man than to give him responsibility."

Left to his own, Richt became one of the hottest coaching commodities in the country during the 1990s, having helped coached two Heisman Trophy winners (Charlie Ward and Chris Weinke).

"Damn, Florida State amazes me year in and year out," said Oregon State coach Dennis Erickson, who coached against Bowden while at Miami. "They get great players and they know what they want for their system."

Because of his charm, Bowden can say almost anything and have it come out the folksy musings of a wise old man. Two seasons ago, star receiver Peter Warrick almost became a sympathetic figure, thanks to his coach, even after the infamous Dillard's incident.

"If he goes out and gets a good discount, I want to know how he did it," Bowden said after Warrick was charged with misdemeanor theft in getting a clothing discount from a friendly clerk. "But I'm not going to send him to jail. I've tried to not let public opinion influence what I do."

Maybe those words sound different coming from someone else's mouth, but since it's Bowden, it usually glides by an adoring media and public with a hearty chuckle.

You want to know what really makes these senior citizens tick? It's the juice, and we're not talking the prune variety. As the Gamecocks came off the field following an Outback Bowl victory over Ohio State on Jan. 1, the 40,000 South Carolina fans at Raymond James Stadium gave the team a standing ovation.

In 107 years of South Carolina football, Cock-A-Doodle Lou had just won the program's second bowl game.

"We have half of our bowl victories in the history of the school," Holtz said, almost giggling.

It wasn't a given that Holtz would return anywhere after leaving Notre Dame in 1996. His 11 eventful years with the Irish did not end well. There were whispers that recruiting had suffered at the same time Holtz's coaching had slipped the final years. Holtz got tired of chasing his tail where "we had years when we went 9-3 and it was a disastrous year."

He still walked away from the Fighting Irish saying, "I will always love Notre Dame."

Two years ago, a rejuvenated Holtz walked into a deflated program in Columbia, S.C., that had five offensive linemen on its roster. By the end of the season, he had used 16. Don't ask how, but let's just say walk-ons and stray defensive linemen will work in a pinch.

He also used six quarterbacks that year. He hadn't used up all of his amusing magic tricks that he used to flash for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.

Still, maybe only Holtz saw a spark after a dreary 0-11 season in 1999. Through the misery, fans still continued to pack Williams-Brice Stadium each week like it was Florida-Florida State.

"You make a first down and they start going down by the goal posts," Holtz said. "When we win a championship, I'm afraid they're going to tear the stadium down. The goal post won't be enough for them."

Also two years ago, doctors gave his wife Beth, suffering from cancer, a 10 percent chance to live. Holtz certainly didn't need the aggravation of trying to mind a failing program at the same time. Athletic director Mike McGee asked Holtz three times before the coach said "yes." Mostly because Beth saw what another chance to win would mean to her husband.

"I said before we went up for her second cancer surgery, 'Why do you really want to live?'" Holtz said. "She wanted to see more grandchildren born. She wanted to see at least one grandchild get married ... and she wanted to see the South Carolina fans rewarded."

OK, so Holtz is melodramatic. The stories become so much schmaltz after a while. So what? Someone must be buying it.

How do you explain 224 victories in 29 seasons, 17 of those with ranked teams? You don't, really. You just try to relish a time in the history of the game when they are setting the standard.

Bowden looks beyond the end of his career and sees the end of an era. Athletic directors are much less patient these days. No matter what you think of his coaching style, John Cooper did get fired at Ohio State after winning 70 percent of his games -- 192 in his career.

Cooper's gone. So is the 70-year-old Lavell Edwards. And West Virginia's Don Nehlen ... and Virginia's George Welsh ... and Arizona's Dick Tomey ... and Missouri's Larry Smith, all of them 60-somethings. Each of these six ranked among the top 11 active winningest coaches in the nation last season before retiring or being shown the door.

But the Big Three continue to march on.

"I thought I was tired of coaching," Holtz said. "I wasn't. I was tired of maintaining and I wasn't even aware of it. When you try to maintain something, you never have any successes because you're never trying to accomplish anything."

Oh, there's plenty more to accomplish for these wise guys. Lucky for us. Once they leave, all those ties to your father's college football will be gone.

We'll largely be left with trendy new guys like Rick Neuheisel and Bob Stoops, whose college football backgrounds don't even go back as far as disco.

"I have no desire to retire," Bowden said. "After you retire, there's only one big event left."

Lindy's Football Annuals (National, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, ACC, plus Pro) are available at newsstands regionally, or can be ordered as a set at www.lindyssports.com, or by calling 1-205-871-1182.