LSU’s decisive 42-25 victory over Clemson in the national championship game Monday night had analysts gushing about how it might be the best team in college football history.

Not only did the Tigers beat seven top-10 teams, including the top four in the AP preseason poll, but they also ended the 29-game winning streak of the reigning national champions.

Whether LSU is the best ever is up for debate. What’s not is LSU appeared light years ahead of Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia, which left me wondering whether those programs will ever win another national title.

It seems so far away from reality.

None of the three has participated in the College Football Playoff, let alone played for a national championship in the past three decades. Where Pitt last won a national title in 1976 and Penn State in ’86, West Virginia never has won a national title but played for one the most recently of the three schools (’88).

The closest any of the three has come to winning a national championship since was Penn State in 1994, when the high-scoring Nittany Lions finished 12-0, won the Big Ten title and Rose Bowl but finished second in the national polls behind Nebraska.

Reminder: That was a quarter-century ago.

That has become a constant source of frustration for three proud programs who reigned among college football’s elite in the 1980s, when Penn State won two national championships, Pitt had back-to-back 11-win seasons and West Virginia lost to Notre Dame in the ’88 national championship game.

But they might not be as far away as you’d think.

Penn State is the closest to being a contender. The Nittany Lions finished their third 11-win season in four years with a victory over Memphis in the Cotton Bowl, and SportsBettingDime.com gives them 30-1 odds to win it all in 2020.

Pitt won eight games for the third time in five years, including its first bowl win under Pat Narduzzi. The Panthers have played spoiler, upsetting both Big Ten champion Penn State and eventual national champion Clemson in 2016 and previously undefeated Miami in the ’17 season finale. West Virginia is only three years removed from a 10-win season and top-10 ranking.

On the flip side, Franklin is 2-9 against top-10 teams and 3-9 against Michigan and Ohio State. Pitt has lost at least three games every season since 1982. West Virginia saw its coach, Dana Holgorsen, leave for Houston. That’s all very sobering.

Still, I believe Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia could be a transcendent talent — whether that’s a coach or a player, if not both — away from returning to national-title contention.

You have to wonder whether Pitt’s Narduzzi, Penn State’s James Franklin or West Virginia’s Neal Brown are the coaches to do it, or if any of the three programs have a player capable of leading his team to a national championship.

So far, they haven’t come close.

But history tells us that can change quickly. Pitt was 1-10 in 1972 before landing Tony Dorsett, then went undefeated and won the 1976 national championship as he claimed the school’s only Heisman Trophy. West Virginia was 4-7 in 1986 before landing Major Harris, then went 11-1 and played for the ’88 national title as he was a Heisman finalist.

More recently, Penn State had three consecutive seven-win seasons before another Heisman finalist, Saquon Barkley, led the Lions to back-to-back 11-win campaigns in 2016 and ’17.

As far-fetched as those schools winning a national title sounds, consider the programs that just played in the championship game. There is no point in comparing Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia to Clemson or LSU, but both programs overcame coaching turnover to find the right man.

And he was right under their noses.

LSU has won three titles under three coaches this century, led by Nick Saban in 2003, Les Miles in ’07 and, now, Ed Orgeron. But after recording double-digit victories seven times in nine years under Miles, LSU slipped to eight- and nine-win seasons between 2014 and ’17. The Tigers went from 10-3 last season to undefeated and national champions.

Clemson never won more than nine games from 2000 through ’10, when the Tigers went 6-7 and lost to USF in the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Like Orgeron, Dabo Swinney was promoted from interim coach and has led Clemson to nine consecutive seasons with double-digit victories, including 15-0 last season.

Orgeron and Swinney have reputations as dynamic recruiters, which is a requirement for any team with national-championship aspirations. As Orgeron’s 3-21 record in SEC play at Ole Miss — where he won 10 games in three seasons — can attest, a coach is only as good as his team’s talent.

That starts with star quarterbacks, as Clemson has won titles with Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence and LSU found a gem in Ohio State transfer Joe Burrow, who won the Heisman in a record-shattering season.

But both schools surrounded those players with a number of future NFL first-round picks. Since 2010, Clemson has more first-round picks (11) than Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia combined (eight). Alabama has won five national titles since 2009, producing 28 first-round picks in that span.

That’s not a coincidence.

Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia belong to Power 5 conferences aligned with the College Football Playoff, so they at least have a path to the national championship. It will require better recruiting, winning a conference championship game and doing so with either an undefeated record or, at most, one loss.

That’s not impossible, just unlikely.

Can Pitt, Penn State or West Virginia win a national championship? Who knows? Remember this: Only two years ago, nobody had heard of Joe Burrow.

Get the latest news about Pitt football and all things Panthers athletics.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)