In what’s been a dark season for a Penn State football program in transition, folks at least got to reminisce last week on the 10th anniversary of October 22, 2016, when the Nittany Lions, still recovering from the sanctions, upset No. 2 Ohio State.

That night ushered in a new era of relevance for Penn State, keeping it in the College Football Playoff conversation year after year before it broke through and reached the semifinals in 2024.

All the while, something’s been missing.

Since that night in Happy Valley, also the last field storm at Beaver Stadium, Penn State hasn’t won a single top-10 regular-season game.

Sure, it beat No. 8 Utah in the 2023 Rose Bowl and even beat No. 8 Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl, but the former was a game with opt-outs and injuries, and the latter was against a Group of Five school.

If you want to get really specific, you can set the benchmark as the 2016 Big Ten Championship against Wisconsin in December, but that makes the 10th anniversary a month away with no opportunities coming up.

At its core, college football runs from early September to late November. For a long time, almost no program could even dream of a relevant postseason appearance. By then, the art of a big regular-season win has never gone out of style.

Yet, despite being a clear-cut top 15 program in the decade and change since the Block Six, Penn State is 0-18 against top-10 teams in the regular season since 2017. Despite leads, stacked teams, and tight, down-to-the-wire games, it couldn’t win one.

It can’t win one in a college football environment that embodies the moniker, “Any Given Saturday.” Over the last five years alone, many downtrodden programs, coaches, and teams found it for one day, while a significantly more talented Penn State team couldn’t ever be better than the sum of its parts once.

Here are 10 of the many, many teams with a more recent top-10 win than Penn State:

UCF (vs. No. 2 BYU, October 24, 2026)

The most recent major upset came in unlikely fashion in Central Florida from the team that actually pioneered Zombie Nation even before it became a staple associated with the blue and white.

Led by former Nebraska head coach Scott Frost, who infamously shrank in big (and small) games, the Knights conjured the magic of their undefeated 2017 season to catch No. 2 BYU off guard after its emotional win in Provo, Utah, against Notre Dame.

UCF is no longer the plucky AAC powerhouse it used to be, having joined the Big 12 a few years ago as part of the sport’s mass conference realignment. It’s been tough sledding ever since.

Since joining the Big 12 in 2023, it went 18-25 and 8-22 in conference play through last Saturday at the Bounce House. As we see all the time in college football, that didn’t seem to matter when opportunity came calling.

Syracuse (vs. No. 6 Miami, November 30, 2024)

When the 24-team playoff is officially confirmed, all Power Four schools will likely be required to schedule a non-conference Power Four opponent.

Despite reasonable complaints about its non-conference scheduling strategy, Penn State has things covered for 2027 and 2028 with Syracuse, even if it’s been one of the worst Power Four teams since this game.

To end the 2024 season, Fran Brown and the Orange hosted a Miami team that was a shoo-in for both the ACC Championship Game and the CFP with eventual Heisman winner Cam Ward, but with momentum as an 8-3 team under a new head coach, Syracuse earned a signature win.

The loss ruined Miami’s season, knocking it out of the conference title game and CFP discussion, marking the second straight year the Heisman Trophy winner flamed out and missed the playoffs.

The win secured Syracuse’s second nine-win season since 2001 and looked to jumpstart a new era, but the last year and a half has been an unmitigated disaster. Since Kyle McCord graduated after the 2024 season, the Orange are 6-13 and just 2-11 in ACC play.

Kansas (vs. No. 6 BYU, November 16, 2024)

Speaking of historically downtrodden programs, the Jayhawks have been that, with only brief periods of relevance, even with Lance Leipold doing an admirable job in Lawrence, Kansas.

His magnum opus was a nine-win season in 2023, but turnover left Kansas 3-6 in mid-November, heading into a road game against undefeated BYU. It was projected to be a close game after Kansas pulled off an upset the week prior and BYU was almost stunned by Utah, but games like these typically only go one way.

For Kansas, it meant an ugly 17-13 win that highlighted a dark season and began an unraveling that cost it the playoff.

Kansas — and Andy Kotelnicki at offensive coordinator — also took down No. 6 Oklahoma in 2023. The Jayhawks have two 10-win seasons in over 130 years of football.

Northern Illinois (vs. No. 5 Notre Dame, September 7, 2024)

Group of Five upsets deserve love too, and the college football world seems to have forgotten what Northern Illinois did on a September day in South Bend, Indiana, way too quickly.

This Notre Dame team eventually played for the national championship, winning 13 in a row before falling to Ohio State.

Northern Illinois, a MAC school with a moderate amount of success, was a near-30-point underdog on the road, but still pulled off the biggest win in program history on the road.

By the way, the last Penn State top-10 win on the road in any capacity? October 25, 2008, against Ohio State. Joe Paterno was still the head coach.

Boston College (vs. No. 10 Florida State, September 2, 2024)

Speaking of former Penn State head coaches, Bill O’Brien started an up-and-down tenure at Boston College with a top-10 win, even if it was a paper tiger.

Coming off an undefeated regular season and a snub in the final four-team CFP in 2023, Florida State was ranked No. 10 with a very different roster to open the season, but it would turn out to be truly awful. Mike Norvell’s troops never got over the hump, going 2-10 in 2024.

Don’t tell that to Boston College, which celebrated what seemed like a signature win to open the 2024 season.

Marshall (vs. No. 8 Notre Dame, September 10, 2022)

The other massive stunner against the Fighting Irish was just two years before the Huskies’ signature win when another local team made history in South Bend.

Marshall, a program more known for its inspiring recovery from a program-crippling plane crash in 1970 than gridiron success, led almost the entire game and held on to stun a weaker Notre Dame team under first-year head coach Marcus Freeman.

What was even weirder, the Thundering Herd eventually fell to 4-4 after this, losing three of their first four Sun Belt games before ending the year on a five-game winning streak.

Appalachian State (vs. No. 5 Texas A&M, September 10, 2022)

Staying in the Sun Belt, Appalachian State has a level of friskiness that other Group of Five programs can’t replicate.

After all, it stunned Michigan as an FCS school in 2007 and nearly did it again to the Nittany Lions in Beaver Stadium in 2018. That magic made its way to Kyle Field early in the 2022 season.

The same day of Marshall’s triumph, Jimbo Fisher’s Aggies were expected to continue a campaign toward the school’s first CFP appearance in 2022, but instead collapsed to a terrible 5-7 season, starting with this game.

The Mountaineers captivated the nation so much that they hosted College GameDay the next week and beat Troy on a miracle Hail Mary.

After that? They stumbled to a 6-6 finish as a mediocre team in the Sun Belt. So it goes.

Iowa State (vs. No. 8 Oklahoma State, October 23, 2021)

Matt Campbell has a more recent regular-season top-10 win than James Franklin; spread the word.

Part of what excited people about his hiring was that his Cyclones went 4-6 against top-10 teams in the same period Franklin went 0-18. The most recent of those four wins came against Oklahoma State in October 2021.

Now, this was an Iowa State team with Brock Purdy and Breece Hall, one that started the season No. 7 and tumbled after a 3-2 start, but winning games in unlikely fashion was a trend.

A 2-3 Iowa State team stunned No. 6 West Virginia in 2018 and won two top-10 games in 2017, including a win over Baker Mayfield and Oklahoma.

Purdue (vs. No. 3 Michigan State, November 6, 2021)

The Spoilermakers were one of the Big Ten’s most intriguing stories for half a decade, especially in the four-team playoff era. One bad night in West Lafayette, Indiana, used to end seasons, and it most recently happened in 2021.

It was a weird year in the Big Ten, one that saw both Iowa and Michigan State spend time in the top four in the second half of the season, but both fell to Purdue.

This was back when the Boilermakers weren’t too shabby, going 9-4 in 2021.

Since then? After a trip to the Big Ten Championship Game in 2022, they’ve gone just 10-33 and 5-26 in conference play.

Stanford (vs. No. 3 Oregon, October 2, 2021)

Finally, back to the days of the Pac-12 and Oregon’s perennial disappointment of not quite reaching the mountaintop.

Stanford was discouraged after a loss to UCLA the week prior, but got a chance to redeem itself against the Pac-12 favorites, and it did in a thrilling overtime win led by quarterback Tanner McKee.

This win, which improved the Cardinal to 3-2, would be their last of the 2021 season. They lost seven consecutive games to end the season, as it proved to be a blip on the radar.

Since that upset over five years ago, Stanford is 17-46 and 10-35 in Pac-12 and ACC play, with four full-time head coaches in five seasons.

Even these guys have enjoyed a big-time home win more recently than Penn State.