PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas

Get ready for another shocker that fits right into this crazy year in college football: Prairie View A&M is on the verge of a winning season.

That’s right, the same program that lost an NCAA-record 80 consecutive games in the 1990s. The team that hasn’t finished above .500 since 1976 and once lost three consecutive games by a combined score of 194-0.

Look at the Panthers now.

They’re 5-2 and have won three in a row heading into Saturday’s game at Arkansas-Pine Bluff (1-7). If Prairie View can win its final three games, it would complete its best season since 1964, when the Panthers went 9-0 and won their last Southwestern Athletic Conference title.

“We’re starting to wake up from the dream,” fourth-year coach Henry Frazier III said. “It’s starting to come to reality.”

The turnaround started two years before Frazier arrived, when Charles McClelland became the athletic director. A 1993 graduate of the school, McClelland witnessed the start of the historic losing streak as a student.

“I took that personally,” he said.

When he took over, the athletic department’s budget was less than $2 million and there were only 15 football scholarships. Five years ago, students accepted a fee that generates $1.8 million per year for athletics, and McClelland raised the annual budget to more than $3 million.

That’s still second-lowest in the conference, but Frazier has succeeded in selling recruits and his staff on his “dream” of turning Prairie View into more than a punch line. He has 63 players on scholarship now and redshirted 24 this season unheard of when the school could barely field a team just over a decade ago.

“We’re not selling the dream anymore,” he said. “You can come here, win some ballgames and get a great education. You can be part of something special down the line.”

Linebacker Zach East transferred from Hampton in 2005. A Houston native, he knew all about the infamous program, but he called Frazier anyway.