The 2007 Mountaineers are still the top story of college football nearly two decades later.

If you ask any college football fan worth their salt what was the best season they can remember, most of them will answer “2007” without hesitation.

And who could blame them? After all, it was the year that featured one of the most shocking upsets in college football history, with Appalachian State ace Michigan in the Big House, and that was just an appetizer.

In all, 62 ranked teams lost to low-ranked or undrafted squads in 2007, and teams ranked No. 2 in one of the three major polls lost seven times in the final nine weeks of the season.

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But a tumultuous year ended predictably, with two SEC and Big Ten powerhouses battling for the national championship in New Orleans.

But what if I told you we almost had another, completely zany ending that would have represented the perfect bow over an already out-of-this-world college football season, culminating in the crowning of the first national champion?

I’m talking, of course, about the 2007 West Virginia Mountaineers football team.

Although the Mountaineers don’t have a national championship banner to their name, they came shockingly close in ’07 and will always be remembered as one of the biggest “could have” stories in sports history.

To understand just how good this West Virginia team was, we have to look at the program as a whole in the mid-to-late 2000s.

Head coach Rich Rodriguez spent his first few seasons in Morgantown using his culture and, perhaps more importantly, his spread offense.

By the end of his fourth season in 2004, the Mountaineers had captured a pair of Big East co-championships and were looking to be the team to fill the power vacuum left by Miami after packing their bags and heading to the ACC before the start of the season.

Then 2005 happened, and it put everyone in the Big East and the country on notice.

The Mountaineers went 11-1 that season and shocked SEC champion Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, doing so with an offensive display led by dual-threat quarterback Pat White.

The following year, West Virginia went on an 11-game winning streak, finishing in the top 10 in the AP Poll for the second consecutive season.

A West Virginia Mountaineers player raises his helmet before the team takes the field against the University of Pittsburgh Panthers during the 2011 Backyard Brawl on Nov. 25, 2011, at Mountaineer Field in Morgantown, W.Va. (Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)

That’s why, referring to 2007, the Mountaineers were considered serious threats to win the national championship, ranked in the top five in the first game of the season.

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Even after an early road loss to top-ranked South Florida (one of the teams that fell victim to the dreaded “number two curse” after climbing to first place in the BCS standings midway through the season), West Virginia had a legitimate shot at making the title game amid all the turmoil around the country.

The team was a laser show on offense, and it was organized by Pat White, who was the ultimate operator in Rodriguez’s distribution system. Joining him at the back were impressive running backs Steve Slaton and Noel Devine, as well as devastating linebacker Owen Schmitt.

Together, this four-headed beast gave the Mountaineers one of the most feared running backs in the nation, and the offensive statistics back up those claims.

West Virginia averaged nearly 40 points per game in 2007, good for ninth best in the nation, and was five yards per play higher and boasted the best yards per play average in America (6.2 yards per rush).

All in all, when this case clicked, no one could stop them.

They have been blowing away teams all year and show no signs of slowing down as the season draws to a close.

So, what happened?

Going into the final week of the season, the Mountaineers are ranked second in the BCS polls (uh oh), and are No. 1 in the USA Today Coaches Poll. All West Virginia had to do was dispatch their lowly rivals, the Pittsburgh Panthers, in The Backyard Brawl and they were guaranteed a spot in the title game.

Pitt has had a terrible season, sitting at 4-7 and playing for nothing but pride after being eliminated from bowl game consideration last week.

Vegas didn’t think too much of the matchup, either, as they made the Panthers a 28-point underdog.

Easy money, right?

Well, remember what I said about the “curse of number two?”

The mysterious voodoo of 2007 reared its ugly head again on a cold, December night in Morgantown as the Mountaineers were held to just 183 yards, turning the ball over five times and missing two chip-shot field goals in the process.

When the dust settled, the now-unknown score of 13-9 flashed on the JumboTron, and West Virginia had effectively played itself out of title contention.

What makes this pill even harder to swallow for Mountaineer fans is that their team would go on to knock off the top five Oklahoma Sooners in the Fiesta Bowl the following month, furthering the momentum of the “what if” story.

West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez runs during the second quarter of the game against Texas Tech at Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown, W.Va., on Nov. 29, 2025. (Brien Aho/Getty Images)

After the season, Rodriguez left the Mountain State for greener pastures in Ann Arbor.

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However, it did not work for the offensive founder, as he was unable to repeat the success he achieved while coaching the Mountaineer.

As for West Virginia, they haven’t come close to the title since.

This story has a happy ending, however, as both West Virginia and Rich Rodriguez may have realized that they need more than they were ready to admit before, and reunited in 2025.

The 2007 season will always be one in the long and storied history of college football, but for one fan, it represented a very close call with the ending.

The pre-game days of college football were brutal and unforgiving, and no one knows that better than West Virginia Mountaineers fans in 2007.

My hope is that they are remembered not as a footnote in sports history, but as a potential dynasty that never was; it was dropped in its prime during college football’s most exciting era.

It’s stories like this that make the game so important at the time.