Other than the rare cases of one year wonders, the trick to winning a championship in most team sports is to be consistently good for a prolonged period so that you are in the final games or tournaments where anything can happen. Winning a national championship in wrestling is especially that way since the national team championship is based on the scoring of the individual wrestlers who qualified to be at the NCAA Championships. While maybe 30 teams might be represented at the NCAAs, only a handful have a realistic chance of claiming the team title since most are playing with fewer cards in the deck than the big boys. PSU, Iowa and OSU - all traditional powers - will have wrestlers at 8 to 10 of the 10 weight classes. Other schools may have a few national champion caliber wrestlers on their rosters, but might be sending only 3-5 guys to the tournament. They can win individual championships, but wont win the team title.

VT has been on the rise and can start to think about a national championship because Dresser/Robie/Hoffman and the newer guys, Zadick and St. John, have been building a solid team from top to bottom where they expect to send almost a full roster to the Tournament. Then it is just a matter of seeing if the top ranked Hokies can compete to expectation, with maybe a few positive upsets along the way. You have to get to that consistent level year after year to even be in the hunt. VT is at that level now.

BTW, as good as Ohio State has always been, they earned their first national championship last year.