Bobby Bowden now all-time major college wins leader

Published Jul. 23, 2012 12:50 p.m. ET

foxsports

By BOB FERRANTE
FOXSportsFlorida.com

Following Monday morning's announcement of NCAA sanctions imposed on Penn State, Bobby Bowden is now recognized as the FBS' all-time wins leader with 377 victories.

For years, Florida State’s Bobby Bowden and Penn State’s Joe Paterno were competing neck-and-neck for the title of major college football’s all-time victories leader.

They were two 70-somethings, battling each Saturday for a record that both cherished while guiding programs that they had led for decades.

And the record that college football fans watched unfold on the field throughout the early portions of the 2000s – with Paterno taking the lead ahead of the now retired Bowden – has been changed by NCAA president Mark Emmert.

Eleven days after the Freeh Report documented the heartbreaking child-abuse scandal in State College, Pa., Emmert on Monday ordered that Paterno’s 111 wins from 1998-2011 will be vacated.

Paterno finished with 409 wins but now his career record is adjusted to 298 victories.

Bowden himself had 12 wins vacated from the 2006 and ’07 seasons as part of an academic cheating scandal. He was forced into retirement by Florida State in 2009. His 377 wins now stands as the most by a college football coach at the NCAA’s highest level.

Former Grambling State coach Eddie Robinson holds the record for Division I-AA (FCS) wins with 408, while Saint John's John Gagliardi has the most wins of any coach in college football history with 484.