Maintaining success and a level of expectation unreachable at most schools is an annual challenge for coaching heavyweights like Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney, two guys who always get the opposition's best shot considering their stance at the top of the polls year after year. Saban in January tipped his cap to Swinney prior to Clemson's national championship game loss to LSU, taking a moment to appreciate what his adversary has built as a competing power over the past decade.

"I think the one thing people need to understand is success is not a continuum,” Saban said. “It’s momentary, and people have a difficult time really trying to maintain a standard of excellence once they have success. I take my hat off to Dabo for winning 29 games in a row. The championships they’ve won and being able to bring themselves back here again this year.

“Complacency creates a blatant disregard for doing the little things right. To be a champion and to repeat as a champion, you have to do the little things right. You have to do it everyday. I think that’s challenging, and that’s one thing I respect about both of these programs. They’ve had a lot of success."

Looking at college football's most successful programs since 2000, there's an interesting dichotomy of schools trending in very different directions as a whole, some on the cusp of an annual reign as a national power while a handful of others appear to have already passed through their glory years.

Success may be cyclical, but winning big in college football annually takes a perfect recipe of factors and only a couple programs have it.

Based on regular season and postseason results since 2000, here are college football's 10 winningest programs over that stretch:

