How long will Steve Spurrier and Nick Saban be allowed to coach?

At this point in time, the answer at both South Carolina and Alabama is likely: “As long as he would like.”

With a combined 35 years of head coaching experience in the league, it is hard to imagine the SEC without Spurrier and Saban, who have become conference legends for both their winning ways on the field and their unique personalities off it.

But even the great ones need a good exit strategy.

Spurrier, who is the league’s elder statesman at 70 years old, has been bothered on the recruiting trail by some rival coaches using his age against him. The fact that South Carolina had a seven-win season in 2014 after three consecutive 11-win efforts likely fuels the smear campaigns against the Head Ball Coach.

In an effort to lighten the mood and ease fears of an impending retirement, Spurrier recently told a recruit he’d coach six more seasons in exchange for his commitment, according to Chuck Kingsbury.

Saban, who is the league’s second-oldest coach at 63, may have a little more time to develop a plan for winding down his coaching career.

But some of the voices in the Alabama media, such as AL.com columnist Kevin Scarbinsky, have already wondered aloud if Saban already has that plan in place and believe that it may be executed sooner rather than later.

Some of the more recent exits from legendary college football coaches, such as Bobby Bowden at Florida State and Joe Paterno at Penn State, have been less than graceful.

In both instances, the coaches held on to their positions past their 80th birthdays, and the results experienced in the final years were not always up to the standard of expectation they set for themselves earlier in their careers.

Some would argue that Bowden sticking around as long as he did handcuffed the Florida State program.

The Seminoles won 10 or more games for 14 consecutive seasons (1987 to 2000), a duration which ended near Bowden’s 71st birthday. From 2001 until he retired at the end of the 2009 season, the Seminoles won 10 games just once more, and went 7-6 three times in his final four years in charge. (Two of those seasons eventually saw wins vacated for NCAA rules violations.)

After a few years of rebuilding, current coach Jimbo Fisher has Florida State back at the top of college football, winning a national championship in the 2013 season and 27 of 28 games in the last two seasons.

Meanwhile, Paterno started seeing a noticeable decline in his teams around the time he turned 73. From 2000-04, Penn State suffered through four losing seasons in a five-year span. The Nittany Lions rebounded to win 51 games in the next five seasons, but there have been questions surrounding just how involved a then 80-plus year old Paterno was in the day-to-day preparations of his team.

Paterno’s tenure ended amidst controversy in 2011, as he was fired over the transgressions of former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. He died two months later.

Will Spurrier and Saban heed these cautionary tales of hanging around too long? Or will the pursuit of additional championships keep them fueled for another decade to come?

The decision for Spurrier at South Carolina appears to be the more difficult and pressing of the two. He has taken the South Carolina program to heights previously unseen by the Gamecocks in the past decade, and as recently as 2013 appeared to have the program in position to make a run at a potential national championship if things were to break the right way.

The program is forever indebted to him, and likely would allow him to continue coaching as long as he felt fit and able to do so. But how many more 7-6 seasons (or worse) would the Head Ball Coach tolerate before he decided to hit the golf course for good?

Saban, on the other hand, is likely to be held to a much higher standard of excellence at Alabama after winning three national championships there. If his production were to slip considerably in the next decade, which seems unlikely given his track record, he could theoretically be asked to step aside.

More likely is that Saban’s tenure at Alabama ends with him deciding that he has had enough after grabbing a fifth college national championship, or perhaps if feels he has enough years left in him to give the NFL one more chance.

What do you think? How much longer will Spurrier and Saban coach? Will their current positions be their final ones? Will they leave voluntarily?