I'm going to guess it's more to do with investing in the olympic sports. There are plenty of non football powers that have strong olympic sports.PSU has been light years ahead of PITT in their olympic sports success for a long, long time. In fact PSU has regularly plucked the best olympic athletics out of Western Pa.
Some would argue that PSU's historically strong commitment to football might have something to do with it.
Pitt is finally investigating and showing they care after like 60 years of neglect