After Georgia ended its 40-year national title drought this season, we rank five college football teams most likely to do it next.
Now that we have seen the Georgia Bulldogs win their first college football national championship in 40 years, it got us thinking, who could be next?
During the College Football Playoff and BCS era, the number of teams that have won college football’s national championship is slim. The list is Ohio State, Miami, Florida State, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama, USC, Texas, Georgia, LSU, Florida, and Auburn. That’s it.
Of all those programs, Tennessee now has the longest national title drought as the Vols won in the first year of the BCS back in 1998.
But the Vols don’t feel like a team that will be breaking its national title drought in the next five years. Truth be told, it’s going to be hard for any team not named Alabama or Georgia to win any national title in the next few years.
However, some didn’t think Georgia was going to break through until it actually did. But it didn’t happen in a day or a year. It was a process and here are five college football powerhouses most likely to break a national title drought similar to Georgia’s in the next five years or so.
And no you won’t find Florida, Florida State, or Texas on this list. As with Tennessee, those programs have a little work to do. All have potential and Texas probably has the best hope with the eventual move to the SEC if Sark can be the guy the Longhorns hope he can be.
Florida State has potential too but needs the right coach and he’s currently not there. The SEC was also hard enough before Oklahoma and Texas joined and while Tennessee is moving in the right direction, the stiff conference competition also kept them out of the top five.
5. Notre Dame (1988)
There’s a reason no Midwestern program has won a national championship, outside of Ohio State, since the 1990s. The recruiting is just different in the SEC and the difference has only been exasperated in the era of the College Football Playoff.
Consider this: Georgia wouldn’t have won the national championship in 2021 without the playoff and the same could be said for Alabama in 2017 or Ohio State in 2014.
The game is different and programs that have reached the playoff have a better shot of getting back and eventually winning.
Notre Dame has played for the national championship and made the College Football Playoff. But that was under Brian Kelly who left for LSU. Some are speculating that it’s because he realized he couldn’t win a national title at Notre Dame and maybe you can’t.
But Marcus Freeman is a dynamic recruiter and he’s an exceptional defensive coach. If the Irish can put together an elite defense and find an elite quarterback, which they think they have in Tyler Buchner, a top-100 QB from the 2021 class, then maybe the Irish can do what Clemson did.
Clemson and LSU proved that if you have a strong blue-chip ratio, albeit one weaker than Alabama and Georgia’s, the only way to make up for that is an elite quarterback. That’s the path for Notre Dame and another program up North.
No. 4 Michigan (1997)
This post is looking specifically at college football programs likely to break a Georgia-like national title drought.
If this was just teams most likely to win a national title, Ohio State would be well ahead of both Michigan football and Notre Dame. But the Buckeyes won back in 2014 and a drought less than a decade old isn’t really long enough to make this list.
Harbaugh and the Wolverines did take a huge step forward in 2021 though and did so by finally beating Ohio State. Notre Dame might have reached the playoff and beat Clemson to help get it there but that was a weakened Clemson squad and that win doesn’t really equal Michigan beating Ohio State in 2021.
The Wolverines beat one of the true elites in college football. Of course, they will have to do it again to win a national title and probably multiple times.
But if the Wolverines can hang onto Jim Harbaugh and parlay the recent run of success into say, a top-5 recruiting class, they might be in business especially with five-star quarterback J.J. McCarthy on the team currently and with Dante Moore, another five-star QB in 2023, just down the road in Detroit, there’s a window for Michigan, like Notre Dame, to have a higher ceiling.
Some will say that Jim Harbaugh can’t win a national championship. They also said he couldn’t beat Ohio State or win a conference title and who has the Big Ten trophy right now? Michigan.
And again, this isn’t saying Michigan will end the national title drought that goes back to 1997 but if Harbaugh finds an elite quarterback, there might be hope just yet.
No. 3 Oklahoma (2000)
It’s been a wild offseason for Oklahoma. The Sooners lost head coach Lincoln Riley to USC, then won a bowl game with former head coach Bob Stoops serving as the interim coach.
Brent Venables was formerly the DC with the Sooners and was an integral part of a national championship-winning program at Clemson. The Tigers ended a long national title drought in the 2010s and that’s not necessarily something people saw coming 5-10 years before it happened.
Some might see Oklahoma’s move to the SEC as a negative but I think it will end up being a positive. For one, the Sooners can recruit with the SEC name for the first time and beyond that, if they want to beat SEC teams, it’s better to play against them all the time and not just in bowl games.
People didn’t necessarily think Texas A&M would be a power in the SEC but with its recruiting base and the reach of the SEC, it was a natural fit.
The Sooners may not have hired an offensive guru but Venables has been the DC behind some pretty big wins over teams like Alabama, Ohio State, and others.
Stoops was a defensive-minded head coach and maybe getting back to that sort of head coach will help OU finally get over the hump for the first since 2000.
No. 2 USC (2004)
In college football, elite head coaches equal wins and championships. Why else would LSU and USC pony up for proven winners?
The Trojans are one of the few programs with the natural resources (outside of a stadium) to win a national title. Southern California is one of the most fertile recruiting grounds in all of the country and Riley was getting many of those recruits to come to Norman, Oklahoma.
Others were headed for the SEC. Bryce Young is a kid that should have been playing quarterback for USC, not Alabama.
When Pete Carroll was hired, he put a fence around Los Angeles and Southern California. With the hiring of Lincoln Riley, the Trojans decided no more half measures — it’s time to go all in.
Even with Clay Helton, the Trojans still had the talent of a national-title contender going into 2021 according to 247 sports’ blue-chip ratio. And in just his limited time as head coach, Riley has already landed five 5-star recruits in 2022 and 2023.
Riley was able to beat out Alabama for the commitment of highly-touted 2022 corner Domani Jackson, as well as Raleek Brown, a five-star running back plus Malachi Nelson — the No. 2 QB and overall prospect in the class of 2023.
USC also has an easier path to the playoff than almost any team on this list. Notre Dame has a very straightforward path too but it means navigating a very tough schedule.
The only true rival in the Pac-12 is Oregon and I would rather be the head coach of the Trojans than the Ducks. If USC is done right, it can be the Mecca of college football that Riley described.
1. Texas A&M (1939)
Now that it’s 2022, it’s been 83 years since the Texas A&M football program has won a college football national championship.
The Aggies’ national title drought is definitely the longest on the list at this point but it’s also the one that is most likely to end in the next few years.
Texas A&M football hasn’t made the college football playoff yet but the Aggies put together a one-loss season in 2020 and won the Orange Bowl. Then, in 2021, the Aggies and head coach Jimbo Fisher beat Alabama with a backup quarterback.
Of course, it’s not surprising that Texas A&M football is on the rise. There’s a reason the Aggies paid so much to hire Jimbo Fisher away from Florida State and it’s because he’s one of the few truly elite head coaches in college football.
Of those currently in coaching, he’s probably among the top three and easily in the top five. And armed with the best recruiting class in the history of the 247 sports composite rankings, a class that includes five-star quarterback Conner Weigman, Texas A&M is the most likely college football team to end a Georgia-like national title drought in the coming years.