Here's where Dabo Swinney ranks among winningest college football coaches at age 50

Jim Rice | The Greenville News

As Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney celebrates his 50th birthday, he also has 127 wins to celebrate. That's a significant milestone and a significant number. How significant?

Here's another number: 26.

That's where Dabo Swinney ranks all-time in wins among major college coaches at their 50th birthday, dating back to the 1890s. There have been a lot of head coaches during that time, and his 127 wins puts him in exclusive company.

The NCAA is celebrating 2019 as the 150th season of college football, but the game didn't pick up steam until the 1890s, when colleges throughout the country began organizing teams and playing other colleges every autumn.

The website sports-reference.com researched as far back as 1890 in compiling its list of winningest coaches in the history of college football. Supplementing that research with that of wikipedia.com to determine the birth dates of many of the 123 coaches on the sports-reference.com list, we offer this list of the sport's winningest coaches at age 50:

MOST WINS BY AGE 50

1. Pop Warner, 202

2. Frank Kush, 173

3. Howard Jones, 168

t-4. Darrell Royal, 161

t-4. Dan McGugin, 161

6. Amos Alonzo Stagg, 153

7. Wallace Wade, 146

t-8. Bud Wilkinson, 145

t-8. Dana X. Bible, 145

t-10. Lou Holtz, 144

t-10. Jock Sutherland, 144

12. George Woodruff, 142

13. Barry Switzer, 141

14. Vince Dooley, 140

15. Terry Donahue, 139

16. Pappy Waldorf, 138

17. Tom Osborne, 137

t-18. Henry L. Williams, 136

t-18. Bo Schembechler, 136

20. Frank Broyles, 134

t-21. Fielding Yost, 132

t-21. Bear Bryant, 132

23. Pat Dye, 131

23. Matty Bell, 131

25. Urban Meyer, 128

26. Dabo Swinney, 127

Those are the raw numbers, and although Swinney is already in elite company, let's throw in some context. What are the keys to winning a lot of games before your 50th birthday?

Become a head coach at a young age

The biggest factor, of course, is how old you are when you first are given the keys to the head coach's office. Becoming a head coach far ahead of your 50th birthday is a must to make this list.

Swinney was 39 when he took over as interim coach in the middle of the 2008 season, about five weeks before his 40th birthday. All 25 coaches ahead of Swinney on the list became a head coach at a younger age; the next-oldest is Urban Meyer, who was 37 when he was hired at Bowling Green in 2001.

Twelve of the 25 coaches ahead of Swinney began their coaching careers while college football was, if not in its infancy, in its toddler years. As more and more colleges and universities launched football programs, their choices for coaches quite often were men who had recently played the sport.

► Pop Warner played for three years at Cornell, including in 1894 after graduating the previous spring. That season, he got his first coaching experience when the head coach was absent; as a team captain, Warner was asked to run the team. A year later, when Warner was 24, Georgia hired him as its head coach.

► Other turn-of-the-century coaches included Henry L. Williams, who became the head coach at Army at 22; Howard Jones and Dana Bible, who were 23 when they debuted as coaches at Syracuse and Mississippi College, respectively; Matty Bell, who went 4-1-1 as the coach at Army at age 24 in 1891; and Dan McGugin, who was 25 when hired by Vanderbilt in 1904.

► And then there was Amos Alonzo Stagg, a member of the of the first All-America team in 1889 as an end at Yale; a year later, he was the head coach at Springfield, and two years after that, the University of Chicago hired the then 30-year-old to help launch its program, which became one of the giants of the early 20th century.

Coach a lot of games

It also helps to get a lot of opportunities to win games. That means coaching a lot of seasons, of course, but another factor is the number of games your school plays each season.

In the early years and again in the more recent years, coaches have benefited from expanded schedules.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were no rules regarding schedules. Some schools played five to seven games; others many more.

George Woodruff, who is No. 12 in the rankings above, had a great advantage by the scheduling flexibility of the early years. Hired at Penn at age 28 in 1892, he coached fewer than 13 games only once in his first 12 seasons and won 12 or more eight times. The Quakers went undefeated three times under Woodruff, winning a national championship each time. He had 124 victories when he left the school after the 1901 season. He was 37.

Stagg coached at Chicago for more than 40 years, starting in 1892. During his first decade, the Maroons had a 22-game season, two seasons with 18 games and another with 17. Until 1906, Chicago never played fewer than 11 games in a season.

As the NCAA became the governing body and athletic conferences evolved in the early 20th century, scheduling became much more standardized. Schedules typically ranged from seven to nine games. In the 1950s, 10-game schedules became the norm, and that increased to 11 in the early '70s. The NCAA approved the current 12-game regular-season schedule in 2006.

The postseason offers more chances at victories

Schedule expansion started with bowl games. Until 1940, the only bowl game was the Rose Bowl; the number of bowls jumped to five by the end of the decade and to eight within the next 10 years. In 2015, the number of bowls reached 40, giving 80 of the 130 Football Bowl Subdivision coaches a chance for another victory each season.

Then there are the conference championships. The Southeastern Conference added a championship game in 1992; since 2015, all 10 conferences in the FBS have brought two teams — and coaches — together for one more game and yet another chance at a victory.

Since 1998, major college football has held playoff games to determine the national champion, ending a more than 100-year tradition of awarding the national championship only through various voting systems.

Two teams met in the BCS National Championship Game from 1998 through 2013. In 2014, the four-team College Football Playoff was launched, giving two coaches two more chances at more victories.

Thanks to the 12-game regular season, Atlantic Coast Conference championship game and the two CFP games, Dabo Swinney led Clemson to the first 15-win season in "modern history" as he turned 49. He may do it again this season.

Regardless of how many games Swinney has coached each season, perhaps most impressive is how few games he needed to reach 127 wins — 157. That is the second-fewest games as a head coach among the coaches on the list above.

So who's No.1? Woodruff, who had 142 wins in only 155 games when he turned 50. And he twice won 15 games. At age 28 and 33.

IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

Dabo Swinney began the 2019 season with 116 victories. Here are the coaches he has passed in the "under 50" club this season:

Dan Devine, 119

Bob Neyland 119

Bob Stoops 120

Danny Ford 121

Jackie Sherrill 122