The Marino era was pretty much the last of the hey day for Pitt, it also ended it 1982 I believe. Have they managed to actually go 11-1 since then? I’m pretty sure they haven’t and I haven’t found record of one.
Sure they did, but they chose to build a non-football arena in the space.
What do you consider a superstar team? Winning regular season games? bowl appearances? bowl victories? fan base? OSU, Mich, and PSU can easily compare to any other teams over the last 25 years in any of those categories which is why they all play to 100,000+ sellouts every week regardless of who they play.