These 5 college football teams will win a national championship soon

Which five college football teams are ready to end a championship drought?

Who saw the LSU Tigers going undefeated and winning the College Football Playoff last season?

Though we’ve known the Bayou Bengals have always been talented, quarterback play has long been their undoing. Fortunately for the LSU program, Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Joe Burrow gave us one of the great single seasons in college football history. He achieved legendary status in Louisiana, as he won LSU its fourth national title in school history and first since 2007.

The last time LSU won a national title, Les Miles was the Tigers head coach. They lost two games that season but still managed to win the BCS National Championship over the Ohio State Buckeyes in one of the craziest college seasons of our lifetimes. But that was a different era and the College Football Playoff has changed everything in the sport we love.

Since its inception in 2014, four programs have won national titles. Ohio State won the inaugural four-team tournament. The Alabama Crimson Tide won it the next year in 2015 and two years later in 2017. The Clemson Tigers captured their second and third titles in school history in 2016 and 2018. Obviously, LSU won it all a season ago.

And if we want to throw in the last BCS National Champion Florida State Seminoles, who beat the Auburn Tigers in 2013, these are the last five different programs to win national titles. No, we’re not going to count the UCF Knights’ undefeated season in 2017 because we don’t do participation trophies here. But if we look ahead, here are five different programs that could win it all soon.

These five college football teams can win a national title soon.

If you can believe it, the Oregon Ducks have never won a national title on the gridiron before. They have won 12 conference championships before, playing in two national title games in the last decade. However, the Ducks came up short to Auburn in 2010 and to Ohio State in the inaugural College Football Playoff in 2014. But here is why the Ducks can win it all in the next five years.

There are three reasons Oregon can be the first West Coast team to win a national championship since the USC Trojans pulled it off back in 2004. One, the Ducks have the perfect head coach to do it in Mario Cristobal. In two years, he’s gotten the Ducks back to national relevancy much like they were for four years under former head coach Chip Kelly. Cristobal will be their new Mike Bellotti.

Two, the rest of the Pac-12 is down, or more precisely, USC is still down. If the Trojans ever get it right again, good luck trying to pry the top talent out of California like the Ducks are doing now. Though there are other programs like the Utah Utes and the Washington Huskies who are well-run, as long as USC remains dysfunctional, that only serves Oregon’s chances of winning it all.

Finally, the biggest reason Oregon can win a national title in the next three-to-five years is the Ducks are recruiting at an SEC level on the West Coast. If the Ducks can recruit like the SEC blue-bloods, Clemson and Ohio State do, they will have the horses to go into battle and hang tough with anyone. Beating the Wisconsin Badgers in the Rose Bowl in January was a very positive sign.