When it comes to longevity among football coaches, most think of Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden, who are vying to be college football's all-time biggest winner.

"JoePa," who has 384 wins, has been coaching for 60 years, all at Penn State and the last 44 as head coach. Bowden, with 382 wins, has coached for 56 years, including the last 34 at Florida State.

There's another longtime college coach who chose the road less traveled far from the Division I spotlight. Jimmie Keeling, who was born in San Angelo in 1935 and coached the Central High Bobcats from 1979-88, is in his 55th year of coaching and his 51st as a head coach. Keeling has 342 career wins, with 159 coming at Hardin-Simmons University and 183 at Texas high schools such as Dublin, Tulia, Elgin, Lubbock Estacado, Andrews, Lamar Consolidated and Central.

"When I started, the 11 players didn't cover 15 feet of the field," said Keeling, who began coaching in 1955 at age 20 with an emergency certificate. "You had two tight ends and all the backs were set tight. It was a slugfest in the middle of the field. Now with the spread offense, they're lined up from sideline to sideline, throwing the ball all over the field, from the NFL down to the high schools."

Keeling, known as a run-oriented coach at Central, now embraces the spread at Hardin-Simmons because it's fun for his players and gives them the best chance to win. "We have kids now that stay for an hour after practice, running routes and throwing and catching. When we ran the Wing-T, we never had kids stay late and practice running plays," Keeling said of the player-friendly spread.

"Another big change now is the training, especially the relaxed rules with the camps and 7 on 7 and summer programs for high school kids. If we had done at Central what they're allowed to do now, they'd have locked me up in the Tom Green County jail. High school players are so much more developed today."

Keeling's long high school career was highlighted by winning the Class 3A state championship at Estacado in 1968, the school's first season to field a varsity team. Being a new school, Estacado was picked to finish last in its district in 1968, but the Matadors ended district rival Sweetwater's 18-game win streak and upset Brownwood in bidistrict on the way to finishing 14-0.

Keeling coached 35 years - a full career to most coaches - at 10 high schools before finding paradise as a college coach at Hardin-Simmons, an NCAA Division III program in Abilene.

"I loved coaching in high school, but when I came to Hardin-Simmons (in 1990 at age 55), I was at a point in my life where coaching older players that were a little more mature was a better fit for me," said Keeling, who in 1990 resurrected the HSU program after a 37-year absence. "There's no doubt that coaching here has lengthened my career. It's not for everybody, but it was the right place at the right time for me."

Being nonscholarship, HSU gets college football players that are strong students. Keeling is proud to note that 130 of his former players are now coaching, but he's equally proud of those that became doctors, dentists and lawyers.

Having players of that caliber helps explain the patch HSU players are wearing on their game jerseys this season. Jimmie's wife Susan Keeling, a native of Mason, was diagnosed during the summer with colorectal cancer and is currently resting between rounds of treatment.

"The players wanted to wear a patch that's a symbol for cancer," Jimmie Keeling said. "It was a great gesture. It tells you what kind of kids we've got."

HSU may not offer athletic scholarships, but its coaches recruit the same as Division I coaches. With Texas producing more players, combined with scholarship limitations, plenty of talented players end up in Division II or III.

"A lot of times, we'll the best player on a team - just not the biggest or the one with the most potential," Keeling said. "Their coaches will say, 'This kid is going to OU because he's 6-foot-5, but that kid over there that's 6-1 is our best player.'"

Keeling recently opened his 20th season at Hardin-Simmons at age 74, and he still coaches the running backs because he wants to remain involved. Contrary to popular theory, Keeling has interests besides football. He's an avid reader of everything from Western novels to books on history, psychology, famous coaches and military generals, to the Bible. He also likes to visit his country place in Mason County and fish a little.

All that said, he has no plans to retire from football. He's not trying to prove anything by coaching into his 70s. He just still enjoys coaching. He still arrives at his office between 6:30 and 7 each morning and usually stays until after dark.

"Now one of these days, they may want to fire me," Keeling said. "I told our president that, if they're going to get rid of me, do it early in the morning so I don't waste a whole day."

Keeling is easily the winningest coach in Hardin-Simmons history, and ranks seventh among all Division III active coaches in career wins. He has coached the Cowboys in 20 NCAA playoff games and to 17 winning seasons.

But he has never considered leaving for a bigger college program that offers scholarships. That's because he enjoys coaching players that are academically sound, don't have to be talked into playing college football, and play mainly for the love of the game.

"A colleague asked me a few years ago, 'Jimmie, why are you still coaching at a Division III school?'" Keeling said. "I told him because there's not a Division IV."