College Football | Baltimore Sports and Life

2026 College Football Preview

Chris Stoner — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 21:27:23 +0000

Lane Kiffin called Kirby Smart last spring to tell him his team stunk. Smart told him the same thing back. Both teams made the College Football Playoff.

That story, from David Hale’s tiered ranking of all 138 FBS teams, is the best shorthand for what this sport has become. The floor has risen. The ceiling has dropped. Mike Elko said it plainly: the best teams today are meaningfully worse than the best teams of five years ago, and the gap between the top and the middle has collapsed.

Phil Steele’s preseason magazine is the cleanest evidence. In his final projected standings he has a two-way tie atop the SEC (Georgia, Texas), a three-way tie atop the Big Ten (Ohio State, Oregon, Indiana), and a three-way tie for second in the ACC (SMU, Clemson, Louisville). Steele has been doing this for thirty years and does not hand out ties for fun. That’s what expanded rosters and unlimited portal movement have done to the top of the sport.

One clarification before we go further, because two things in this preview sit uneasily next to each other. We’re arguing that the sport has compressed nationally — and then, forty paragraphs from now, we’re going to tell you the Big Ten had three teams better than anyone in the SEC and seven teams worse than anyone in the SEC. Both are true, and they’re not in conflict. What’s compressed is the distance between programs, not the distance within conferences. Any well-funded school with the right coach can now reach the top ten in two years, which is national parity. But the leagues themselves have gotten enormous and unbalanced, so a single conference can house both the best team in America and the 90th-best one. Indiana’s rise and the Big Ten’s stratification are the same phenomenon viewed from different angles: money and mobility made it possible to climb fast, and the schools that climbed fastest didn’t wait for their neighbors.

The headline number is still three — three straight national titles for the Big Ten, by three different schools, ending with Indiana going 16-0 and sweeping all 66 first-place votes after beating Miami on January 19. The SEC put five teams in last year’s field, got one into a semifinal, and none into the final. It’s on its longest title drought since the turn of the century.

The playoff stays at twelve for a third straight year, after the Big Ten (which wants 24) and the SEC (which wants 16) failed to agree before ESPN’s deadline. Two tweaks passed: all four Power Four champs are guaranteed in, as is the top-ranked Group of Six champion, and Notre Dame is guaranteed if it finishes top twelve. Both exist because Duke won the ACC last year and watched James Madison and Tulane take the spots.

The AP poll drops Monday. Here’s ours.

Top 20 Power Rankings Entering 2026

Power ranking is a neutral-field question. CFP percentage is a different one — it folds in schedule, conference path, and the auto-bid structure. That’s why Notre Dame carries the highest playoff probability in the sport while sitting third here, and why Texas is sixth with the toughest schedule in America and a playoff number below Texas Tech’s.

A note on schedule numbers throughout this piece: every strength-of-schedule rank comes from ESPN’s final preseason SP+ projections, and every one is a rank out of 138 where No. 1 is the hardest slate in the country.

#	Team	CFP %	The case
1	Ohio State	76%	Sayin (PFF’s No. 1 passing grade), Jeremiah Smith (PFF’s No. 1 player), and a defense that hasn’t allowed 25 points in 24 straight games. Six opponents in the CBS top 25 — arguably the toughest schedule in program history.
2	Oregon	74%	SP+ No. 1 offense, No. 2 defense. Three of PFF’s top 33 players on one defensive line.
3	Notre Dame	78%	Returns 72% of its offensive and defensive snaps, best rate in the country, plus a guaranteed berth at top-12 and the softest résumé path of any contender.
4	Indiana	72%	27-2 under Cignetti. The 2025 drive-scoring differential (+34.4%) is the best of the playoff era.
5	Georgia	69%	Best back seven in the country, led by KJ Bolden. The schedule is the argument: Steele has it 9th-toughest nationally, while SP+ calls it the softest draw in the SEC at 26th. Either way, it’s a demanding slate by any standard but Georgia’s own recent ones.
6	Texas	62%	Best defensive front in America. Also the No. 1 strength of schedule in the country — eight games against projected top-20 teams.
7	Miami	71%	National runner-up, upgraded at quarterback, and it avoids both teams that beat it last year.
8	Texas Tech	64%	Best yards-per-play defense of the playoff era, and a league schedule that misses BYU, Utah, and Kansas State.
9	Texas A&M	46%	SP+ ninth. Best success-rate differential in the SEC by 50%. Lost ten players to the draft.
10	Ole Miss	40%	Chambliss and Lacy are a top-12 PFF player apiece. The schedule is the hardest Oxford has seen in years.
11	LSU	42%	Kiffin and Leavitt, walking into a genuinely difficult first year — 19th-toughest schedule per SP+, 11th per FPI, with nine SEC games plus Clemson.
12	Oklahoma	40%	Fourteen starters back, a healthy Mateer, and the fourth-hardest schedule in America.
13	BYU	40%	Third nationally in returning snap percentage. Bachmeier and LJ Martin both back.
14	Alabama	40%	Good, not great — but PFF’s Nos. 15 and 38 players are both Alabama defensive backs.
15	USC	33%	Maiava averaged 9.1 yards per attempt. They’re also 15-15 in their last 30 against P4/P5.
16	Michigan	29%	Whittingham, a real offensive line, John Henry Daley, and 23 interceptions over two years to fix.
17	Penn State	26%	Misses Ohio State, Oregon, and Indiana. Also returns five starters.
18	Tennessee	22%	Knowles fixes the defense. FPI has the slate 14th-toughest nationally and only 13th-hardest inside the SEC, which tells you everything about this league. Quarterback is unsettled.
19	Washington	22%	45 points per game in nine wins, 9.3 in four losses. Demond Williams is a problem for anyone not elite defensively.
20	Iowa	20%	Reigning Joe Moore winners with two of PFF’s four best returning linemen. Four losses by fifteen points, total.

These sum to roughly 9.7 of twelve. The rest goes to the Group of Six auto-bid (~1.0) and the field — Utah, Louisville, SMU, Clemson, Missouri, Arizona, Auburn, Virginia Tech, Florida.
A note on schedule numbers: this preview cites three systems — ESPN’s SP+, ESPN’s FPI, and Phil Steele’s rankings — and they don’t always agree. Every figure below names its source, and every one is a national rank where No. 1 is the hardest slate in the country.

Consensus check (top ten)

Team	BSL	Coaches	SP+	Kalshi CFP %
Ohio State	1	1	1	76
Oregon	2	2	2	75
Notre Dame	3	5	3	82
Indiana	4	6	5	74
Georgia	5	3	4	69
Texas	6	4	6	65
Miami	7	7	7	74
Texas Tech	8	12	8	64
Texas A&M	9	8	9	—
Ole Miss	10	10	—	—

Our biggest gap from the coaches: Texas Tech four spots higher, and Georgia and Texas each a spot lower than voters have them.

Five Teams We Like Better Than The Projections

1. Auburn. 0-6 in one-possession games. That’s a coin landing on its edge six straight times. Alex Golesh arrives running the Cignetti playbook, bringing quarterback Byrum Brown (3,158 passing, 1,008 rushing at USF) with him, and inherits a defense returning most of its production under DJ Durkin with first-team All-American linebacker Xavier Atkins. Auburn is priced like a program in transition. It has more pieces than that.

2. Iowa. Four losses, fifteen total points, and one of five teams that didn’t lose a game by more than a touchdown. The reigning Joe Moore line returns Kade Pieper (PFF’s No. 25 player, moving to center) and Trevor Lauck, who allowed six pressures all season. The catch is real — 8,843 career offensive snaps, fewest of any P4 team, which means the skill positions are learning on the job. But Iowa has more playoff-era wins than any P4 program that’s never made the field, and the thing that usually keeps them out is close-game variance that just cut against them four times in one year.

3. Louisville. Eight losses over two years, seven by one score. Isaac Brown led the nation at 8.75 yards per carry, more than a full yard clear of second — his own backup was third. And Clev Lubin is the highest-graded returning edge defender in FBS since 2024, with 110 pressures and a 24% pass-rush win rate that led the Power Four. Jeff Brohm’s fourth team has a top-five ACC defense and a genuine star at each line of scrimmage, and it’s being priced third in a three-team race.

4. Virginia Tech. James Franklin walks into a roster that isn’t bare and a schedule that gives him runway — no projected top-30 opponent until the Oct. 24 trip to Clemson. The defense has to be dramatically better; last year’s unit gave up 2.8 points per drive on possessions starting in its own territory, worst in the ACC and 128th nationally. But a 6.5-win number prices a program’s past, not this staff’s floor.

5. Oklahoma State. A genuinely contrarian one. Eric Morris rebuilt the roster wholesale out of North Texas and brought the two pieces that matter: Drew Mestemaker, who led FBS with 4,379 passing yards and 34 touchdowns against nine picks as a first-year starter, and Caleb Hawkins, who led the entire country with a 94.1 PFF rushing grade and 25 touchdowns as a true freshman. Yes, thirty-nine teams have won a game against Big 12 competition more recently than Oklahoma State has. That’s exactly why the number is where it is.

Also considered: Arizona (Fifita is undersold everywhere but Tucson), Missouri (Hardy and Cayden Green are both top-20 players nationally, health permitting), Florida (biggest year-over-year climb in the CBS 138 at +49 spots).

Five Teams We Like Less Than The Projections

1. Houston. Steele has the Cougars fourth in the Big 12. We have them outside the top six. Last year: 6-1 in one-possession games, 4-1 in games decided by a field goal or less, five wins after trailing or being tied in the fourth quarter, the easiest schedule in the league, and the largest positive penalty margin in the country at 38 fewer than opponents. Individually, any one of those could be a skill. Collectively, they’re the standard profile of a team whose record outran its play, and nearly every one of them points toward regression. Houston has ten wins by a field goal or less over four seasons, most in the nation. Runs like that end.

2. Utah. Utah’s offensive success rate jumped from 38.2% to 50.8% in one year — the largest such leap of any Power Four team, and leaps that size historically give back a meaningful share of the gain. Add a first-time head coach, a slate ranked 64th-toughest nationally and among the softest in the Big 12 (so the record will likely look better than the team), and twelve straight losses to ranked opponents by an average of thirteen points. Steele has them third in the Big 12. We have them outside our national top 20 entirely.

3. Virginia. Ten wins on one of the easiest P4 schedules in the country, propped up by a four-game stretch with three overtime wins and a survival on a late safety. Per ESPN’s metrics this year’s slate again ranks around 65th overall and 16th of 17 in the ACC, so the schedule advantage is intact. The experience is genuine — nobody in FBS has more. But a season built that heavily on one-score outcomes is the hardest kind to repeat.

4. Minnesota. A plus-one point margin for an eight-win team, driven almost entirely by a plus-24 points-off-turnovers margin. Set that aside and the underlying scoring profile looks closer to a four-to-five-win team than an eight-win one. Drake Lindsey’s 5.46 yards per dropback ranked 118th of 134; of the sixteen quarterbacks below him, four were Power Four starters and all four were benched and transferred by season’s end.

5. Penn State. The consensus has decided that Matt Campbell plus the easiest contender schedule in the Big Ten equals an immediate playoff push — Athlon projects 10-2, the market says 8.5. Penn State returns five starters. Campbell is an excellent coach who just watched the program he left get projected at 4.5 wins the moment he walked out the door. Year one in Happy Valley is a rebuild wearing a contender’s schedule.

Fades the market has already made, so we won’t take credit: Vanderbilt (5.5), Georgia Tech (6.5), Iowa State (4.5), Wake Forest (5.5).

Conference Deep Dives

THE SEC

Overview. Sixteen teams, nine conference games for everyone for the first time. SP+ has eleven SEC teams in its top 25 and everyone except Arkansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi State inside the top 30 — depth no other league approaches. What it doesn’t have is a No. 1, and it doesn’t have proven quarterbacks. Five SEC teams made the playoff last year; one reached a semifinal, none reached the final.

Schedule is doing enormous work in this league, and the honest summary is that nobody gets a break. Texas drew the toughest slate in America per SP+. Oklahoma’s is fourth. Tennessee has the 13th-hardest schedule in its own conference and still the 14th-hardest in the country by FPI. Georgia’s draw is the softest in the SEC by SP+ at 26th nationally — and Phil Steele has that same schedule 9th-toughest in America. For comparison, the easiest schedule in the Big 12 ranks 72nd by SP+. The gentlest path in the SEC is harder than what forty-plus teams elsewhere will walk. That’s the depth argument, and it doesn’t require picking a favorite among the metrics.

Coaching churn was seismic: Kiffin to LSU, Golding to Ole Miss, Golesh to Auburn, Sumrall to Florida, Silverfield to Arkansas, Stein to Kentucky.

1. Georgia — SEC title odds: 25%

Strength: The back seven, led by KJ Bolden — PFF’s No. 11 player and the most valuable returning safety in the country. Drew Bobo anchors up front. The league’s most forgiving schedule helps too.
Weakness: Explosiveness, in both directions. Only 39% of Georgia’s passing yards came on throws traveling 10+ yards downfield, 126th of 134. The pass rush has quietly collapsed: nine sacks on 337 non-blitz dropbacks, down from 21 the year before and 36 during the 2021 title run.
The question: Dominant, or just very good? Georgia was 52-3 against Power Five teams from 2021-23 by an average of 27 points. Since then: 18-5 by under 13. Eleven programs have a more recent playoff win.
Circle: at Ole Miss, Nov. 7.

2. Texas — 17%

Strength: The front. Simmons and Rasheem Biles — PFF’s most valuable returning linebacker, with 31 tackles for loss or no gain over two years — are the best edge/backer pairing in the sport.
Weakness: The run game and the calendar. Texas backs scored six rushing touchdowns all season, and the Longhorns drew the No. 1 schedule in the country.
The question: Is Arch Manning great, or very good on a great roster? CBS’s insider survey named him the sport’s most overrated player. PFF has him ninth overall and notes he was sixth nationally in passing grade from Week 9 on. Both can be true at once.
Circle: vs. Ohio State, Week 2. The final three games are all on the road.

3. Texas A&M — 12%

Strength: Efficiency. A plus-12.32-point success-rate differential, 50% better than any other SEC team. Mario Craver’s 3.25 yards per route run led all qualified SEC receivers.
Weakness: Ten players drafted, a program-record-tying haul, plus a rebuilt offensive line.
The question: Was eleven wins the new baseline or the outlier? A&M has averaged 7.5 regular-season wins since joining the league in 2012.
Circle: vs. Texas, Nov. 27.

4. LSU — 11%

Strength: Kiffin, and it may need to be enough. He’s 12-2 in his last fourteen SEC games with 21-plus points in thirteen of them, against an LSU program that managed 21 points five times in its last thirteen. Trey’Dez Green and Jordan Seaton give the offense a real floor.
Weakness: Everything is new at once. Sam Leavitt is coming off a down year, though he’s top-ten nationally in big-time throw rate with 39 explosive runs over two seasons.
The question: Can a first-year staff install a culture in the hottest job in America? Trey’Dez Green and Jordan Seaton give the offense a real floor.
Circle: vs. Clemson, Week 1. Best opening night in the sport.

5. Ole Miss — 10%

Strength: Chambliss (PFF No. 12, second in FBS in passing grade under pressure) and Kewan Lacy (No. 10, 307 carries, 24 touchdowns, 1,010 yards after contact). The best quarterback-running back tandem in college football.
Weakness: Everything is new at once, and the schedule isn’t waiting — 19th-toughest by SP+, 11th by FPI, nine SEC games plus Clemson in Week 1. Sam Leavitt is coming off a down year, though he’s top-ten nationally in big-time throw rate with 39 explosive runs over two seasons.
The question: How much of last year was scheme? Ole Miss led in the second half of every game it played, one of only three teams to do so.
Circle: vs. Georgia, Nov. 7. Golding is undefeated all-time against Smart.

6. Oklahoma — 8%

Strength: The defensive front. 63 tackles for loss led the nation, David Stone was second among FBS tackles in run-stop rate, and Tate Sandell is the reigning Groza winner.
Weakness: The schedule, brutally — fourth-toughest in the country. Road trips to Michigan and Georgia before Red River in Week 6, then four more top-25 opponents in November.
The question: Venables has alternated six-win and ten-win regular seasons for four straight years. Which one is this?
Circle: at Georgia, Sept. 26.

On Alabama at seven. This is where we split from Phil Steele, who has the Tide T-3 in the SEC and his No. 1 surprise playoff contender, largely on a schedule that misses both Texas and Ole Miss. His case is real, and the secondary backs it up: Bray Hubbard (PFF No. 15, most valuable returning safety over two years, seven interceptions) and Dijon Lee Jr. (No. 38, 6-foot-4, an 80.2 coverage grade as a true freshman) are as good a duo as exists in the country.

Ours is the running game and the profile. Twelve of Alabama’s thirteen FBS games came against FPI top-40 teams — most in the country — and the Tide went 8-4 while outscoring that group by two total points across twelve games. Over Saban’s final five years, Alabama was 34-8 against that tier by 13.2 a game. Last season the Tide averaged 3.85 yards per designed run, 129th of 136, and were one of four teams in the bottom 30 in yards both before and after contact. The other three were Kent State, UMass, and Charlotte. Alabama SEC title odds: 9%. If Keelon Russell hits, Steele is right and we look silly by October.

THE BIG TEN

Overview. Three titles in three years by three different schools, and a 9-3 record against other conferences in playoff games since realignment — three times the CFP wins of the next-best league.

It is also the clearest illustration of the point we made up top. Last year the Big Ten had three teams better than anyone in the SEC and seven teams worse than anyone in the SEC. Ohio State and Oregon went a combined 25-1 against everyone not named Indiana. That’s not evidence against national parity; it’s what national parity looks like inside an eighteen-team conference where four schools are spending like NFL franchises and four others aren’t.

Steele projects a three-way tie at the top, and we think that’s close to exactly right. New head coaches at Michigan (Whittingham), Penn State (Campbell), Michigan State (Fitzgerald), and UCLA (Chesney).

1. Ohio State — Big Ten title odds: 29%

Strength: Julian Sayin completed 77.0% of his passes, the third-highest single-season mark in the history of the sport, set the PFF single-season accuracy record, and led all FBS quarterbacks in passing grade. He throws to Jeremiah Smith, PFF’s No. 1 player for a second straight year, and now Chris Henry Jr. Eight offensive starters return.
Weakness: Seven defenders to the draft, and a slate with six CBS top-25 opponents that pushed the win total down to 9.5.
The question: Can the defense be merely very good and still win it all? Probably. Ohio State has lost more than two regular-season games once since 2005.
Circle: at Indiana, Oct. 17. Road trips to Texas, Indiana, USC, and Nebraska, plus home dates with Oregon and Michigan.
For Buckeye fans: since 2011, Ohio State has closed a season on back-to-back losses four times. The next years produced 12-0, a national title, and another national title. They lost their last two in 2025.

2. Oregon — 26%

Strength: SP+ No. 1 offense and No. 2 defense. Dante Moore (PFF No. 7) led the nation in deep-passing grade with 30 big-time throws, tied for most in FBS, and turned down a projected top-three pick to return. Brandon Finney Jr. allowed the lowest passer rating of any qualified Big Ten outside corner.
Weakness: The big-game ledger, and coordinator turnover. Lanning is 5-7 against top-15 opponents; four of the five wins came by a touchdown or less, four of the seven losses by ten or more.
The question: Does the offense hold its level with new voices calling it?
Circle: at Ohio State. With a trip to USC and a home date with Michigan, the No. 1 seed is entirely self-determined.

3. Indiana — 23%

Strength: The defense and the left tackle. Carter Smith is PFF’s No. 8 player overall; Amare Ferrell is tied for the Power Four lead with eight interceptions over two years across 1,500-plus snaps.
Weakness: Fernando Mendoza is gone. Josh Hoover arrives with nearly 10,000 career yards and 24 interceptions over two seasons — Indiana’s quarterbacks threw 13 in that same span.
The question: Repeatable, or lightning? Cignetti answered it by signing seventeen transfers, including Nick Marsh (100 catches at Michigan State) and Tobi Osunsanmi up front.
Circle: vs. Ohio State, Oct. 17. Indiana misses Oregon entirely and hosts both Ohio State and USC.

4. USC — 7%

Strength: Coverage. Opposing quarterbacks averaged 6.25 air yards per attempt against USC, lowest in FBS, and only 65.5% of throws even crossed the line of scrimmage. Now add Jontez Williams, who has allowed a 25.6 passer rating since 2023, lowest among FBS corners with 300+ coverage snaps. Maiava averaged 9.1 yards per attempt with 27 big-time throws.
Weakness: 15-15 in the last 30 against P4/P5 competition, and Maiava’s 21 turnover-worthy plays tied for ninth nationally.
The question: Riley has said publicly this roster can win a national championship. In Los Angeles, saying it out loud usually means the clock has already started.
Circle: vs. Oregon. USC hosts Oregon and Washington back-to-back.

5. Michigan — 5%

Strength: The trenches. Sprague in protection, Daley off the edge with a 93.4 pass-rush grade that ranked second in FBS, and a rushing attack that was 19th nationally in EPA.
Weakness: Throwing it. 23 passing touchdowns against 23 interceptions over two years, after 78 and 24 in the four before that. 81st nationally in passing EPA. Steele flags one of the hardest schedules in the country.
The question: Does Underwood become the player the recruiting rankings promised in year two with Beck?
Circle: vs. Oklahoma. Michigan hosts Oklahoma, Iowa, Penn State, and Indiana.

6. Penn State — 4%

Strength: The schedule. Misses Ohio State, Oregon, and Indiana; hosts USC and Minnesota. Campbell brought Iowa State players with him to plug the biggest holes.
Weakness: Five returning starters.
The question: How long does a full rebuild take, even on an easy path? Penn State lost nine games over two years and eight came by a touchdown or less — the accumulated near-misses that cost Franklin his job.
Circle: vs. USC.

THE BIG 12

Overview. Sixteen teams and, for one year, a real hierarchy — until Brendan Sorsby left Texas Tech following a controversial, gambling-related eligibility fight, turning the league’s clearest picture into its murkiest. Tech still has the most talented and experienced roster by a wide margin, plus the easiest schedule in the conference — 72nd-toughest nationally — and a draw that misses BYU, Utah, and Kansas State.

The structural problem hasn’t changed: 1-8 in playoff games since 2014, with TCU’s 2022 run the only win. It stays ahead of the ACC on head-to-head, 10-6 over two seasons.

1. Texas Tech — Big 12 title odds: 40%

Strength: A defense that allowed 3.94 yards per play, the best mark of the playoff era, and became one of three teams in that span to hold opponents under three yards per designed run for a full season. A.J. Holmes Jr. was the nation’s most valuable interior defender; Austin Romaine arrives with the most run stops of any Power Four linebacker over two years. The Dickey/J’Koby Williams/Joyner backfield is the deepest in America.
Weakness: Quarterback, and it isn’t close.
The question: Can you win a conference without knowing who’s taking snaps in September? One caution flag: Dickey’s per-carry numbers are propped up by a single game against Kansas (21 carries, 263 yards). Against everyone else he averaged 4.4.
Circle: vs. Houston, Week 3. The only way Tech sees BYU is in Arlington.

2. BYU — 22%

Strength: Continuity. Third nationally in returning snap percentage at 62.5%, with Bachmeier back and LJ Martin — preseason Big 12 Player of the Year, 1,299 yards, 56 forced missed tackles, 36 explosive runs, all league bests — returning from shoulder surgery.
Weakness: The résumé gap. Of the eleven FBS teams above a .700 win rate since 2020, only BYU has never made a playoff, at 57-20.
The question: Three toss-ups decide it — home against Arizona, road at TCU and Utah.
Circle: vs. Notre Dame, Oct. 17, in Provo. Win that and the résumé builds itself.

3. Utah — 9%

Strength: Defense, always. Scalley built those units alongside Whittingham for two decades.
Weakness: Sustaining an offensive leap of that size, with a schedule ranked 64th-toughest nationally — among the league’s softest — likely to make the record flatter the team.
The question: Can Utah beat somebody good? Twelve straight losses to ranked opponents since 2022.
Circle: vs. BYU.

4. Arizona — 8%

Strength: Fifita, with 9,183 career yards and 73 touchdowns, plus Tre Smith back from injury alongside Chase Kennedy and Taye Brown.
Weakness: No middle ground — seven straight years finishing either inside the SP+ top 30 or outside the top 75. And a plus-88 points-off-turnovers margin after a minus-50 the year before, the largest positive swing in FBS. Swings like that rarely hold.
Circle: at BYU. They lost in Provo in overtime last season.

5. Kansas State — 7%

Strength: Scheduling fortune. K-State misses Texas Tech, BYU, and Utah, has the 69th-toughest slate nationally, and SP+ makes them an underdog in exactly one game.
Weakness: Four new offensive line starters, two returning defensive starters under new coordinator Jordan Peterson, and a first-year head coach.
The question: Avery Johnson is the only Big 12 quarterback in the playoff era with 300+ dropbacks to complete under 60% in consecutive seasons. Does that change?
Circle: at TCU.

6. TCU — 4%

Strength: Jeremy Payne, who over his last five games — all against winning teams, three against ranked opponents — put up 602 total yards at 6.43 a carry.
Weakness: Jaden Craig arrives from Harvard, where he threw for 2,869 yards and 25 touchdowns in eleven games, to replace Josh Hoover.
Circle: vs. BYU, Oct. 3.

Houston sits seventh for us and fourth for Steele. That’s the sharpest single disagreement in this preview.

THE ACC

Overview. Seventeen teams, nine conference games for most, and a league that got mocked all last season while producing the national runner-up. Duke won the ACC and lost the playoff spot anyway — a wrong the new access rules have since corrected.

The scheduling ambition is real: 25 non-conference games against Power Four opponents plus Notre Dame, more than any conference, including nine against the SEC and six against the Irish. All seventeen members play at least ten games against P4-or-Notre Dame competition. Boston College drew the league’s toughest slate at 27th nationally. The problem has never been willingness. It’s the top end.

This year the top end is Miami — 165 of 188 first-place votes, and SP+ has the Hurricanes seventh nationally with the next ACC team, Clemson, at 23rd. The league has six teams bunched between 23rd and 37th. That gap, and that bunching, is the whole race.

Part of why it’s bunched: four of the seventeen programs are in year one or year two under a new head coach. James Franklin at Virginia Tech and Tavita Pritchard at Stanford are first-year hires, Jake Dickert is entering year two at Wake Forest, and Cal now has Tosh Lupoi after he left Oregon’s defensive coordinator job — the second Ducks coordinator to leave for a head-coaching seat this offseason. Lupoi inherits Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele coming off a strong freshman year, which is a better starting point than most first-year hires get.

1. Miami — ACC title odds: 46%

Strength: Skill talent. Malachi Toney is PFF’s No. 5 player — he led FBS in yards after the catch (841), missed tackles forced after the catch (33), and receptions producing a first down or touchdown (58), as a true freshman. Mark Fletcher ran for 1,192. Darian Mensah led the Power Four in passing yards and brought Cooper Barkate with him. Bryce Fitzgerald had six interceptions as a freshman.
Weakness: The trenches. 14,601 career snaps and two first-round edge rushers gone off the two lines.
The question: Does Mensah win a big one? He’s 1-6 against ranked opponents at Duke and Tulane. Worth remembering how brutal Miami’s 2025 was: eleven games against FPI top-40 teams, while ACC title participants Duke and Virginia played eight combined.
Circle: at Notre Dame, Nov. 7. Miami misses both SMU and Louisville in the regular season.

2. SMU — 13%

Strength: Kevin Jennings enters year three with nearly 7,000 career yards, and SP+ gives the Mustangs the most navigable schedule of the ACC’s second tier.
Weakness: Closing, and a front-loaded slate. SMU has played seventeen ACC games and had a chance to win on the final play of all seventeen. They travel to Florida State and Louisville in the first month.
The question: Does one of those putts finally drop?
Circle: at Louisville, Sept. 19.

3. Louisville — 13%

Strength: A star at each line of scrimmage. Isaac Brown’s 8.75 yards per carry led the country by over a full yard, and Lubin’s edge production is the best of any returner in FBS.
Weakness: Seven of eight losses over two years came by one score. Two straight years of that stops being purely variance.
Circle: vs. SMU, Sept. 19. Louisville plays Ole Miss on a Sunday in Week 1 and Villanova on a Friday in Week 2; this is their first real Saturday.

4. Clemson — 11%

Strength: Sammy Brown — 106 tackles, 13.5 for loss, five sacks, 18 run stops, tied for tenth among FBS linebackers — and a front seven that should be top-fifteen nationally. SP+ is meaningfully higher on Clemson than the human consensus.
Weakness: Quarterback, and close games. 32-7 in one-possession games from 2011-21; 9-8 since 2022.
The question: Christopher Vizzina or true freshman Tait Reynolds? Swinney has never wanted an “I told you so” season more.
Circle: vs. Miami, Oct. 3, one month after a Week 1 trip to LSU. Clemson’s season will be legible by the first Saturday in October.

5. Virginia Tech — 6%

Strength: Franklin, a Penn State reunion project at quarterback, and tight end Luke Reynolds.
Weakness: The defense that surrendered 2.8 points per drive on its own side of the field, last in the ACC.
Circle: at Clemson, Oct. 24 — the first projected top-30 opponent on the schedule.

6. Pitt — 4%

Strength: The pass rush. Only Clemson has averaged more sacks per game than Pitt (3.1) since Narduzzi took over in 2015.
Weakness: Rasheem Biles, the most valuable returning linebacker in college football, now plays for Texas.
Circle: at Miami.

Georgia Tech falls out of our top six. Only 24% of last year’s offensive snaps return, both coordinators were replaced, and presumptive starter Alberto Mendoza — Fernando’s younger brother — has never made a college start. Steele has the Yellow Jackets fifth. The market has them at 6.5. The team we’d watch instead is Cal: a defensive-minded first-year head coach in Lupoi, a returning quarterback in Sagapolutele, and a schedule with real swing games at UNLV, SMU, NC State, and Virginia. In a league where six teams are separated by fourteen SP+ spots, that’s a live ticket.

NOTRE DAME (Independent)

Playoff odds: 78% — the highest in the sport, because the Irish are guaranteed a berth at top twelve and face nothing resembling a conference gauntlet.

Strength: Continuity and defensive backs. The 72% snap-return rate leads the country, and no team had a better explosive-play differential (+7.5%). Leonard Moore is PFF’s No. 2 player overall, with the best first two college seasons of any cornerback in the PFF era — seven career interceptions and nineteen career completions allowed for a first down, none of them while Notre Dame trailed. Brauntae Johnson (No. 44) had four picks and missed two tackles all season.
Weakness: Two first-round running backs gone in Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price, and a health picture that’s improving but not resolved. Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa — the top returning linebacker in college football, with the second-best run-defense grade in FBS — is one of six players on modified activity coming off his November ACL tear. Marcus Freeman has said he’s hopeful the group will be full-go before the opener, which is a meaningfully better outlook than “availability unknown,” but it isn’t a clearance either. A defense this good has one genuine soft spot, and it’s what happens at linebacker if he isn’t right.
The question: Does CJ Carr — PFF No. 14, sixth in the Power Four in big-time throw rate — become the No. 1 overall pick the league thinks he might be, now that he has to carry the offense rather than complement it?
Circle: vs. Miami, Nov. 7, with at BYU on Oct. 17 right behind it. Those are the two games on the schedule. The opener is worth noting for a different reason — Wisconsin at Lambeau Field, in prime time, is the kind of neutral-site swing the Irish schedule specifically to build a résumé that doesn’t come with a conference title attached.

THE PAC-12 (2.0)

Overview. Eight football members: Oregon State and Washington State, joined by Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, and Utah State from the Mountain West and Texas State from the Sun Belt. Those newcomers won thirteen of the last fourteen MWC titles. ESPN projects the new Pac-12 with the best average SP+ rating of any Group of Six league. The format is a seven-game round robin plus an adjustable flex week in Week 13 — a genuinely clever piece of design forced by an eight-team membership.

Order and title odds: Boise State (34%), Fresno State (18%), San Diego State (15%), Texas State (13%), Washington State (10%), Utah State (6%), Oregon State (3%), Colorado State (1%).

Boise State is the favorite but missed or broke a tackle on 76.5% of attempts last year, second-worst in the country, and has lost three straight to Fresno State. Fresno returns twelve starters in Matt Entz’s second year, six from a defense allowing 18.8 a game, and hosts Boise on Oct. 10 in the game that decides the league. San Diego State’s secondary is absurd: opponents attempted 52 throws of 20-plus yards and completed eight, averaging 4.96 per attempt, by far the best rate in FBS. Texas State has the conference’s best offense — nineteen plays of 50-plus yards, four more than any other FBS team.

The grim number underneath all of it: of 76 all-conference players from the five non-power leagues with eligibility remaining, only 23 stayed at the same school.

National Unit Rankings

Top 8 Offensive Lines

Notre Dame — Four starters back off a line that allowed twelve sacks and paved 5.7 yards per carry. Anthonie Knapp kicks inside to guard as a first-team All-American; Guerby Lambert didn’t allow a sack across 670 snaps.
Iowa — Reigning Joe Moore winners, with Pieper (83.5 run-block grade, fifth among FBS guards) and Lauck (87.8 pass-block grade, fourth among tackles). Two of the four highest-rated returning linemen in the country on the same unit.
Georgia — Drew Bobo is the nation’s best center with nearly 1,000 career snaps at the position. Dontrell Glover logged 750-plus as a true freshman.
Ohio State — Eight offensive starters protecting the most accurate passer in college football history not named Bo Nix or Mac Jones.
Indiana — Carter Smith is the only returning FBS tackle inside the top ten in both pass- and run-blocking grade. Wisconsin’s Joe Brunner plugs in at guard.
Texas — Goosby is a top-ten 2027 prospect and, with Carter Smith, one of only two returning tackles with 80-plus grades in both phases. This has to be the most improved line in America.
Missouri — Cayden Green’s 89.6 pass-blocking grade was second in all of FBS and the best of any returning tackle, after he moved out from guard.
Michigan — Andrew Sprague is elite in protection, and Whittingham builds identity here first.

Just missed: Oklahoma, LSU (Jordan Seaton may be the best pure pass protector in the sport), Cincinnati (Evan Tengesdahl is the top-graded returning guard in the country), Tennessee, Minnesota.

Top 8 Defensive Lines

Oregon — A’Mauri Washington (led all FBS tackles in batted passes), Teitum Tuioti (11 sacks, most run stops of any FBS defensive lineman over two years), and Matayo Uiagalelei (52 pressures). Three PFF top-33 players on one front. PFF thinks it might be the best line in America and it’s hard to argue.
Texas — Colin Simmons is PFF’s No. 3 player and the most valuable returning edge in FBS. Nobody generated more sacks per game without blitzing.
Texas Tech — Holmes was the most valuable interior defender in the country, in front of a unit that just posted the best yards-per-play mark of the playoff era, with portal adds Trey White, Adam Trick, and Mateen Ibirogba.
Oklahoma — The 63 TFLs and Stone’s second-ranked run-stop rate. Venables’ fronts have finished top-twelve in tackles for loss eleven times since 2013.
Ohio State — Seven defenders drafted and Patricia still has Alabama transfer James Smith and the deepest two-deep in the league.
Ole Miss — Will Echoles led the Power Four in both pressures (39) and defensive stops (35), with six batted passes.
Miami — Ahmad Moten Sr. and Justin Scott are a genuine top-five interior pairing, carrying a unit that lost more experience than anyone.
Louisville — Lubin alone gets them here.

Just missed: South Carolina (Dylan Stewart’s 88 pressures since 2024 trail only Simmons), Michigan (Daley), Indiana, Clemson, Pitt.

Top 10 Coaching Staffs

Head coach plus everything under him — coordinators, position development, and the increasingly decisive skill of roster construction under a salary cap nobody calls a salary cap. A great head coach is the single biggest input here. He just isn’t the only one, and in 2026 he may not even be the tiebreaker.

1. Ohio State. Ryan Day has a national title, a .900-plus career winning percentage, and the two things that follow from those: he can hire anyone, and nobody leaves unless they’re leaving to run their own program. Matt Patricia’s defense has now been elite for two straight years — 24 consecutive games without allowing 25 points is the second-longest streak of the playoff era — and that came after the unit was supposed to fall off. The receiver development is the best in the sport, full stop, and it’s the reason a five-star like Chris Henry Jr. picks Columbus knowing Jeremiah Smith is already there. Eight offensive starters returning is a staff achievement as much as a roster one.

2. Indiana. Curt Cignetti is 27-2 with a national championship at a program that was irrelevant thirty months ago, which is the single most impressive body of head-coaching work in college football right now. But the staff underneath him is the actual story. They identified a Heisman winner, a title-winning defense, and a full offensive line in the transfer portal inside three years — and when all of it graduated at once, they went out and signed seventeen more transfers rather than flinching. Portal evaluation is now a coaching discipline, and this is the best department in the country at it.

3. Georgia. Kirby Smart is the best defensive head coach of his generation and has two national titles to prove it, and the staff’s development record in the back seven is unmatched — KJ Bolden arrived as the No. 1 safety recruit in his class and is now the most valuable returning safety in America, which is what’s supposed to happen and almost never does. The reason they’re third rather than first is philosophical, not tactical: Smart has taken and lost the fewest transfers in the SEC over three years (30 in, 43 out) while publicly pushing back on the sport’s new economics. That worked brilliantly for a decade. It’s working slightly less well now, and the pass-rush numbers — nine sacks on 337 non-blitz dropbacks, down from 36 in 2021 — are the first place it shows.

4. Notre Dame. Marcus Freeman runs the most stable operation in college football, which in this era is a competitive advantage rather than a compliment. The 72% snap-return rate leading the country is a retention number, and retention is coaching. Joe Rudolph’s offensive line work is the best in the sport — twelve sacks allowed, 5.7 yards per carry, and a returning first-team All-American who’s being moved to a new position because the staff thinks it makes the whole unit better. The defensive back pipeline (Moore, Brauntae Johnson, Christian Gray, Adon Shuler) is a factory that hasn’t slowed down.

5. Oregon. Dan Lanning has built the most talent-rich roster outside of Columbus and Austin, recruits and retains at an elite level, and just convinced a projected top-three NFL pick to come back to school — which is a coaching win before it’s a roster win. The question is continuity. Lanning lost both coordinators to head-coaching jobs this offseason: Will Stein to Kentucky and Tosh Lupoi to California. That’s the clearest possible endorsement of the staff he assembled and a real risk to the one he has now.

The replacements are internal-feeling hires rather than outside gambles. Drew Mehringer takes over the offense that just graded as SP+’s No. 1 unit in the country — a scheme that threw for more yards to tight ends and running backs (1,581) than any team in America, and which now has to keep Dante Moore’s deep-ball production intact after he led the nation in that grade with 30 big-time throws. Chris Hampton inherits the SP+ No. 2 defense and, in the front, arguably the best position group in the sport: A’Mauri Washington, Teitum Tuioti, and Matayo Uiagalelei are all inside PFF’s top 33 players. Hampton’s secondary background is the encouraging part given Brandon Finney Jr. is coming off a season in which he allowed the lowest passer rating of any qualified Big Ten outside corner.

Two elite units, two first-year play-callers. It’s the single most interesting continuity test of 2026, and it’s the reason Oregon sits fifth rather than second.

6. LSU. Lane Kiffin is the best offensive play-caller in college football and it isn’t especially close — 12-2 in his last fourteen SEC games with 21-plus points in thirteen of them, against an LSU program that managed 21 points five times in its last thirteen. Pair that with Blake Baker, a legitimately excellent defensive coordinator, and you have the most interesting staff bet of 2026. The unknown is whether Kiffin the CEO is as good as Kiffin the coordinator in a job where the temperature never drops.

7. Michigan. Kyle Whittingham won 21 years’ worth of games at Utah by out-coaching more talented rosters in the trenches, and he’s walking into Ann Arbor with more talent than he’s ever had. He brought John Henry Daley with him — the No. 2 pass-rush grade in FBS last season — which tells you players will follow him. And the Jason Beck hire is the most encouraging thing Michigan has done in two years: an offense actually designed around Bryce Underwood’s skill set rather than one he was asked to survive. Twenty-three passing touchdowns against 23 interceptions over two seasons is a coaching failure, and it’s the specific failure this staff was hired to fix.

8. Texas Tech. Joey McGuire has done the hardest thing in the sport — win a conference at a place that had never done it in the Big 12 era — and he did it by building a defense, which nobody in Lubbock has ever managed. Cody Campbell’s money gets all the coverage, and it should get some. But money doesn’t produce the best yards-per-play defense of the playoff era; coaching does. This staff also just replaced its best linebacker with the best available linebacker in the portal (Austin Romaine) and reloaded a defensive front with three targeted transfers. They will need every bit of it with the quarterback room in the state it’s in.

9. Miami. Mario Cristobal has completely inverted the program’s identity — Miami had the best sack differential in FBS last year at plus-30, which is not a sentence anyone wrote about the Hurricanes for two decades. The offseason was the flex: they lost Carson Beck to the NFL and simply took the ACC champion’s quarterback and his No. 1 receiver in one stroke. The counterweight, and it’s a fair one, is that this staff has been better at acquisition than at closing — Cristobal’s late-game management remains the most-litigated thing about him in South Florida.

10. Clemson. This is a bet on the assistants more than the principal. Dabo Swinney has two national championships and an unmatched program-building résumé, but the last four years have been a slide — 9-8 in one-possession games since 2022 after going 32-7 in them before — and his resistance to the portal has cost him. Tom Allen and Chad Morris is the best coordinator pairing he’s had in years, arriving at exactly the moment he needs it. Sammy Brown is a first-team All-American under Allen’s system and SP+ likes this roster substantially more than the human consensus does. If Swinney gets his “I told you so” season, this staff is the reason.

Just missed: Auburn (Alex Golesh plus DJ Durkin is the most likely staff on this list to be in the top ten next August), Tennessee (Josh Heupel hiring Jim Knowles is the single best coordinator addition of the offseason), Texas (Sarkisian assembles talent as well as anyone; the 0-fer against Smart and last year’s Florida loss are why he’s here and not in the ten), BYU (Kalani Sitake is 23-4 over two years on a fraction of the budget), Iowa, Virginia Tech (James Franklin), Florida (Jon Sumrall and Buster Faulkner).

The Individual Awards

Top 5 Heisman Candidates

1. Julian Sayin, QB, Ohio State. We’re going off the board relative to a market that has Carr and Manning as co-favorites. Sayin led all FBS quarterbacks in passing grade, set the PFF single-season accuracy record, posted the third-highest completion percentage in the history of the sport, and earned a sub-70 grade exactly once. He is the only returning 2025 Heisman finalist, he plays for the preseason No. 1, and he now adds Chris Henry Jr. to a room that already has the best receiver alive. The only real risk is vote-splitting with his own target.

2. Arch Manning, QB, Texas. The most talent, the biggest platform, the clearest arc. He was sixth nationally in passing grade from Week 9 onward and tied for fifth among Power Four quarterbacks in rushing touchdowns. He is also, per CBS’s insider survey, the most overrated player in college football. Both things can be true, and Week 2 against Ohio State starts settling it.

3. CJ Carr, QB, Notre Dame. Co-favorite, the softest schedule of any contender, and an evaluation community that already believes he’s a future top pick. The knock is real: Notre Dame’s offense doesn’t generate huge counting stats, and no preseason favorite has won this since Mariota in 2014.

4. Dante Moore, QB, Oregon. Led the nation in deep-ball grade with 30 big-time throws. Turned down a top-three pick. If Oregon wins the Big Ten and he’s the reason, he wins this.

5. Trinidad Chambliss, QB, Ole Miss. Won his eligibility case in court, came back, and is PFF’s No. 12 player after ranking second in FBS in passing grade under pressure. The 91.8-grade revenge performance against Georgia in the quarterfinals is the tape. The harder schedule cuts both ways.

Best non-quarterback: Jeremiah Smith, and it isn’t close on merit — he leads all returning receivers in grade, yards, and touchdowns over two seasons. Best longshots: Ahmad Hardy, Malachi Toney, Byrum Brown, Caleb Hawkins.

Top 8 Quarterbacks

Julian Sayin, Ohio State — Historically accurate. PFF’s No. 4 player overall.
Dante Moore, Oregon — Highest ceiling, best deep ball, best supporting cast.
Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss — Second in FBS under pressure, with 585 rushing yards on top of it.
CJ Carr, Notre Dame — Six interceptions in a full first season behind the best line in America.
Arch Manning, Texas — 26 passing touchdowns and ten rushing. The second-half surge was real.
Darian Mensah, Miami — Led the Power Four in passing yards, sixth nationally in big-time throws.
Jayden Maiava, USC — 9.1 yards per attempt and 27 big-time throws. Also 21 turnover-worthy plays.
Bear Bachmeier, BYU — Best freshman season in the Big 12 and the reason BYU is 23-4.

Next eight: Sam Leavitt (LSU), Noah Fifita (Arizona), Drew Mestemaker (Oklahoma State), Demond Williams (Washington), Kevin Jennings (SMU), Marcel Reed (Texas A&M), Bryce Underwood (Michigan), LaNorris Sellers (South Carolina).

Top 8 Skill Position Units (RB / WR / TE)

Ohio State — Jeremiah Smith, a five-star freshman in Chris Henry Jr. who’d start anywhere in America, and Bo Jackson in the backfield.
Miami — Toney, Fletcher, Barkate, and Elija Lofton. Four NFL bodies.
Oregon — Jamari Johnson replaces a first-round tight end and may be better; nobody in the country threw for more yards to tight ends and running backs.
Texas — Cam Coleman led all SEC players with thirteen contested catches on a broken offense, and Ryan Niblett is the best return man in America.
Indiana — Charlie Becker back, Nick Marsh in with 100 career catches.
Texas Tech — Terrance Carter Jr. is the first-team All-American tight end, J’Koby Williams put up 1,592 total yards and eleven touchdowns, and the backfield runs three deep.
Missouri — Ahmad Hardy led the nation in yards after contact, the Power Four in rushing yards and forced missed tackles, and has 399 more rushing yards since 2024 than any returning FBS back. This ranking depends entirely on his health.
LSU — Trey’Dez Green was second among all tight ends in both receiving touchdowns and contested catches, now in a Kiffin offense.

Just missed: Florida (Jadan Baugh, one fumble on 354 career carries), Ole Miss, Louisville, Oklahoma State, Rutgers (KJ Duff tied for the FBS lead in contested catches).

Quick Hits

Most experienced roster: Virginia, at 48,313 career snaps. Only five other schools clear 40,000. Least: Northern Illinois, at 11,935.
Most newcomers: Iowa State, with 82, under first-year coach Jimmy Rogers.
Best oddity of 2025: Baylor fumbled fourteen times and lost twelve; its opponents fumbled eight and recovered six. An 18.2% recovery rate is the worst in FBS and, functionally, impossible.
Sleeper nobody’s discussing: South Carolina, with the most career offensive snaps in the country, 76% of last year’s offensive production back, and Sellers, Nyck Harbor, and Dylan Stewart all returning off a 4-8 season.
Biggest climb in the CBS 138: Florida, up 49 spots.
Hottest seats: Luke Fickell (Wisconsin), Dave Aranda (Baylor), Mike Norvell (Florida State), Mike Locksley (Maryland).
Best Week 0 game: North Carolina vs. TCU in Dublin, Aug. 29 — with Virginia vs. NC State in São Paulo the same weekend, which tells you as much about the sport’s direction as anything else in this preview.

Five Biggest Storylines Entering Week 1

1. The playoff format war is unresolved, and it’s about to get uglier. Twelve teams for a third year, because the Big Ten wants 24, the SEC wants 16, and the 2024 agreement gave those two leagues the only votes that matter. A 20-team model with four play-in games got floated this month and shot down quickly. The committee met Aug. 10 on TV windows and scheduling, and a decision for 2027 is due before Dec. 1. Watch what happens the first time a two-loss ACC champion knocks out a three-loss SEC team.

2. Can anyone break the Big Ten’s grip? Three titles, three schools, and a 9-3 playoff record against other leagues. The SEC’s counter is depth — eleven teams in the SP+ top 25, everyone but three inside the top 30 — against a Big Ten that owns the top two and also has four teams outside the top 60. Depth wins regular seasons. The Big Ten keeps winning Januarys.

3. Indiana’s encore. Cignetti is 27-2, with both losses coming to the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the country. Mendoza is gone; Hoover and seventeen transfers arrive. If Indiana stays in the top four, the stockpiled-talent model is officially dead and any well-run program with money and the right coach can win a national title inside three years. If they go 8-4, everyone files last season away as a fluke. It’s the most consequential single-team story of 2026 and it isn’t close.

4. Courtrooms, eligibility, and gambling. Chambliss won his case and starts for Ole Miss. Oklahoma’s Owen Heinecke followed the same path. Tennessee’s Joey Aguilar was denied. There is no coherent eligibility standard anymore — there’s litigation, and whoever files it best. Meanwhile Sorsby, who’d have been the best quarterback in the Big 12, left Texas Tech over a gambling-related eligibility fight. He will not be the last.

5. The Pac-12 is back, and the Group of Six is hollowing out. The new league launched July 1 with the best projected rating of any non-power conference — and it cost the Mountain West the winners of thirteen of its last fourteen titles. Only 23 of 76 returning all-conference players from the five non-power leagues stayed put. Four Group of Five teams have made the playoff; they’ve lost by an average of three touchdowns. If the field ever reaches 24 and teams thirteen through 24 actually matter, the honest question is whether these programs get ranked there at all.

The Floor and the Ceiling

Everything above is downstream of one idea, so we’ll end where we started.

The floor has risen and the ceiling has dropped, and the consequences run through every section of this preview. It’s why our top eight are separated by fractions rather than tiers, and why the coaches, SP+, and the prediction markets can look at the same eight teams and order them four different ways. It’s why Steele projected ties atop three of the four power conferences and nobody in the industry blinked. It’s why Alabama can be the seventh-best team in its own league in August, and why Auburn can go 0-6 in one-score games and still be a reasonable bet to win nine.

It’s also why schedule now does work that talent used to do. Texas drew the hardest slate in America. Tennessee has the 13th-hardest schedule in its own conference and the 14th-hardest in the country. Georgia’s draw is either the softest in the SEC or the 9th-toughest nationally depending on which model you trust, which is its own kind of answer. Notre Dame carries the highest playoff probability in the sport without being the best team in it. Texas Tech is a conference favorite partly because of who it doesn’t play. Twenty years ago those were footnotes. Now they’re the argument.

And it’s why the preseason favorite matters less than it ever has. Only two teams this century — 2004 USC and 2017 Alabama — have started No. 1 in the AP poll and finished as champions. Last year the voters got the entire top four wrong, then watched a program that was irrelevant in 2023 win sixteen straight games.

So when the AP poll lands Monday and somebody tells you it’s meaningless, they’re only half right. It isn’t a prediction anymore. It’s a snapshot of a sport where reloading is faster and staying on top is harder than at any point in living memory. Entering Week 1 genuinely not knowing who the best team in the country is used to be a failure of analysis.

Now it’s just the truth about the sport.

Sources: ESPN’s final preseason SP+ and 138-team tiered rankings (Bill Connelly, David Hale); ESPN’s preseason All-America team (Lederman/Olson); the PFF College 50 (Wasserman/Chadwick); Phil Steele’s 2026 preview magazine; the AFCA Coaches Poll; ACC/SEC/Big Ten/Big 12 preseason media polls; CBS Sports 138 and regression analysis; Sports Illustrated, Athlon, On3; and FanDuel/DraftKings/BetMGM/Kalshi markets as of Aug. 14, 2026. All rankings, percentages, and opinions are our own.

Strength-of-schedule figures are drawn from ESPN’s SP+, ESPN’s FPI, and Phil Steele’s 2026 rankings, each named where cited; all are national ranks where No. 1 is hardest. Conference title odds sum to 100 per league; national CFP percentages sum to twelve and are calibrated against the live Kalshi qualification market. Estimates, not forecasts.

The post 2026 College Football Preview appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

College Football 2025 – College Football Playoff Quarterfinal Preview

Mike Lowe — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 05:34:35 +0000

Happy New Year everyone! We’ve come down to the Elite Eight, football style. Let’s have a look at what might be four terrific games.

No. 2 Ohio State vs. No. 10 Miami — Cotton Bowl (Dec. 31) 7:30pm ET, ESPN

Line: Ohio State -9.5, O/U 40.5

These two historic programs don’t meet very often — this will be just the 6th time ever — but one of those was a game for the ages that ended with maybe the most controversial official’s call ever. The stakes are nearly as high for this one, and as the over-under suggests, it will likely be decided by the defenses.

The Buckeyes come in as the defending champs, experience that could come in handy. Their defense is ridiculously good, leading the nation in both points and yards surrendered per game. Even in their only loss in the Big Ten Championship Game they held the Indiana Hoosiers to just 13 points. There really aren’t many more superlatives you can add to that, and the Hurricanes will have their work cut out for them. Offensively they once again have the best receiving weapons in the country, Jeremiah Smith and the underrated Carnell Tate, and a solid dual-threat QB in Julian Sayin. Their running game isn’t special, but good enough to add balance. Their offensive line has been prone to inconsistency, and that could be a problem against a defensive front like Miami.

The Hurricanes’ formula is likely to be pretty pugilistic — play in a phone booth and shorten the game to limit the Buckeyes’ possessions. This worked in a 10-3 victory at Texas A&M a couple weeks ago, though the Aggies aren’t quite at OSU’s level. Miami will need Carson Beck to manage the game efficiently and avoid all costly mistakes, something he hasn’t done with great consistency. Getting the ball in the hands of electric true freshman Malachi Toney where he can create big plays is a must. RB Mark Fletcher will need to pound out yards the way he did on Miami’s decisive scoring drive against A&M to keep the Canes out of third-and-long situations. Defensively the plan is simple — exploit what’s been an occasionally suspect offensive line and get after the quarterback with one of the elite defensive fronts in the game, led by Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor. If Sayin is uncomfortable all night, the Canes have a shot.

My Pick: I think Miami can keep this close early and maybe even jump out to a lead. Remember, last season the teams with the first round byes all came out flat and lost their games, so Ohio State will have to battle the effects of a long layoff. But I think by the second half the Buckeyes’ talent will take over.

Ohio State win/cover

No. 4 Texas Tech vs. No. 5 Oregon — Orange Bowl (Jan. 1) Noon ET, ESPN

Line: Oregon -2.5, O/U 51.5

As the rankings and point spread suggest, this looks like the most evenly-matched game of the playoff so far.

The Red Raiders are led by their defense that ranked third in the nation in both major statistical categories — points and yards allowed per game. Importantly, at least for this matchup, they were the best in the country in rushing yards allowed — just 68.5 per game. They aren’t just good on that side of the ball, they’re plucky too — their 23 fumbles-forced also led the country. All-in-all, this is a fierce defense playing in a conference known for offense. Offensively Tech has a balanced attack and can move the ball well – their 480 yards of offense per game was fifth in the nation. They also get out to big leads, outscoring their opponents by 262 points in the first two quarters this season, which leads the country. They did struggle in their loss at Arizona State, but QB Behren Morton was out with an injury. Still, I imagine the Ducks will watch that film and maybe even call up their old OC Kenny Dillingham for tips.

Oregon has an explosive offense, led by the 13th best rushing offense in the country. They’ve got to find a way to get yards against Tech’s elite run defense. More importantly, QB Dante Moore needs to be able to keep the ball moving in the passing game — if there is a soft spot in the Tech defense, that is it. Stretching the field could open up things for the Ducks’ running attack. Defensively Oregon really let up in the second half of their first round game against James Madison. That’s not terribly concerning, as it happens sometimes when you have a 34-6 halftime lead against a lesser opponent. But there have been other times this season where they’ve had lapses in closer games (4th quarter at Penn State, most notably). They can’t afford to let their guard dow against the Red Raiders.

My Pick: I think Oregon is the more talented team on paper. Texas Tech feels like the more complete team to me. This is another game where I wonder if the team with the longer layoff, Texas Tech, struggles to get going after not playing since December 6. Watch out for special teams in this one too, where I give Texas Tech the edge.

Texas Tech win/cover

No. 1 Indiana vs. No. 9 Alabama — Rose Bowl (Jan. 1) 4pm ET, ESPN

Line: Indiana -7, O/U 47.5

These teams have never played before. Indiana is playing in the Rose Bowl game for the first time since 1968. There’s going to be a lot of talk about nostalgia and history, but this comes down to one thing — whether can Alabama score against Indiana’s elite defense.

The Tide offense has been very pass-heavy this season. Ty Simpson threw for 3,500 yards and 28 Tis the season, and WRs Germie Bernard and Ryan Williams are the best pair this side of Columbus, OH. But their running game offers little balance and their offensive line has ben leaky at times. Defensively the Tide have been very good, particularly up front, while the secondary has been prone to the occasional breakdown.

Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza leads a balanced Hoosier offense. moving the ball through the air will be necessary, so the O-line will need to give him time. Defensively the Hoosiers are outstanding, right behind Ohio State in the major categories. With Alabama not being a serious threat to run the ball, their focus will be on rushing the passer and defending against the big plays in the passing game. An underrated part of Simpson’s game is both his ability to extend plays and take off for sizable runs, so that’s something Indiana must guard against.

My Pick: Last season when Indiana made the playoff as an 11-1 at large team, it felt like they should have just been happy to be there. That’s no longer the case — Indiana is legit. Alabama reached its ceiling with their thrilling come-from-behind victory over Oklahoma. The road ends here, against an Indiana defense that will give the Crimson Tide all kinds of problems.

Indiana win/cover

No. 3 Georgia vs. No. 6 Ole Miss — Sugar Bowl (Jan. 1) 8pm ET, ESPN

Line: Georgia -6.5, O/U 55.5

This is a rematch of what was a great back-and-forth game in October that Ole Miss led in the 4th Quarter before Georgia rattled off 17 unanswered points to get a 43-35 win in Athens. There will probably be a lot of talk about a guy who won’t even be in the stadium — former Rebels, and current LSU head coach Lane Kiffin. Don’t waste oxygen on him. Win or lose, the Rebels will be well-prepared for this rematch and his absence will have no bearing on the outcome.

Georgia’s offense is well-balanced and efficient. They’re good at sustaining long drives. In QB Gunner Stockton they have what feels like the second-coming of Stetson Bennett — unheralded recruit, bided his time as a backup, then took over when the bigger-name guy got injured and never looked back. Georgia’s defense has been prone to slow starts and strong finishes in some games this season. They came back to win at Tennessee and at home against Ole Miss, but fell at home against Alabama — all after giving up sizable early leads. While they locked down the opponent in the 4th Quarter in all three of those games, they really shouldn’t keep tempting fate like that.

The Rebels have been a great story this season, coaching drama notwithstanding. They are led by the dynamic Division II transfer QB Trinidad Chambliss. Leading rusher Kewan Lacy had to leave the first round game against Tulane with a shoulder injury. He is expected to play, but that will definitely be something to watch. The Rebels defense has been….well, serviceable enough to post 12 wins. They can, and have, been run on to a good extent (148 ypg). They are going to have to do better in that regard and force Georgia into 3rd-and-long, where their much more effective pass defense can get them off the field.

My Pick: This should be a great game. Like last time, expect Ole Miss to start fast. Georgia has not played since the SEC championship game (Dec. 6). Again, a question of rust and layoff. I expect a closer game than their first meeting.

Georgia win/Ole Miss cover

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College Football 2025 – Where We Stand Headed Into Championship Weekend

Mike Lowe — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 03:36:27 +0000

The regular season has concluded and we know who some of the playoff participants will be, and approximately where they will be seeded. But there are still spots to be filled and intrigue abounds. Let’s go!

Who’s In?

Ohio State and Indiana finished ranked 1 and 2, respectively. When they meet in the Big Ten Championship Game it will strictly be for a conference banner and the #1 overall seed. The loser is very unlikely to drop out of the Top 4, so there really isn’t a great deal hinging on the outcome of this one. If you were to ask both teams what they really want most out of the game, it would almost certainly be no serious injuries.

Georgia is in a similar spot sitting at #3. They will play Alabama for the SEC Championship (again), but probably remain in the Top 4 even if they lose. The Tide have definitely had their number over the years, even without Nick Saban stalking the sideline, so winning this one would feel nice for the Bulldogs. But if you were to force them to choose between winning or emerging from the game healthy, I think they’d choose the latter.

#4 Texas Tech was the main beneficiary of Texas A&M’s loss. They now hold a spot for a first round bye and should keep it if they defeat BYU in the Big 12 Championship Game. Lose and they probably drop, but not all the way out of the playoff bracket. The Red Raiders defeated the Cougars 29-7 in Lubbock in November.

Oregon and Ole Miss also moved up after the Texas A&M loss to #5 and #6, respectively. At that spot the Ducks will be hosting one of Tulane/North Texas/James Madison on Dec 19th or 20th. The Rebels, who rightfully were not dropped after Lane Kiffin’s departure, will host one of Virginia/Tulane/North Texas on the 19th or 20th. More on how that might shake out later.

I need to give Texas A&M their own little section here. They dropped from #3 to #7 after their 27-17 loss to Texas, which also eliminated their chances to play for the SEC title. I’ve long assumed the Aggies deserved their high ranking after beating Notre Dame in South Bend in Week 3. Now I’m wondering if they are a low-key fraud. What else is on their resume besides that? Of the SEC teams they played, only one had a winning record in conference….Texas, a loss. Their best SEC win came against Missouri, a team that had exactly zero wins against opponents that finished with a winning record. Of the bottom five teams in the SEC standings, the Aggies played them all. Half of the SEC teams they played fired their coach. I think you get my point. Nonetheless, they should still end up hosting a game at home in the first round, even if they drop a spot. (see: Alabama)

Oklahoma held on to their #8 spot from last week. Right now they would host the #9 team at home. But that could change. While they are unlikely to move up, they could get bumped down and have to hit the road in the first round.

Alabama jumped Notre Dame from #10 to #9 after beating 5-win Auburn. Why? Apparently the committee was impressed that they went on the road and won a rivalry game where they were impressive in the 1st Half (much less so in the 2nd Half) and specifically praised the coaching staff for going for it on a 4th-and-goal in the 4th Qtr, with the game tied, instead of taking the field goal for a 3 point lead. Whatever. The Irish won convincingly at Stanford, but I guess it wasn’t enough, and if things break wrong for them Saturday they could get left out (again, more on that in a bit). As for Alabama, I have to believe if they lose to Georgia they won’t drop out of the playoff bracket. The big question is what happens if they win? How far should they move up? Ahead of Oklahoma, who defeated them couple weeks ago? Should they ascend all the way to the Top 4? They would have some great wins (Georgia twice, Vanderbilt and Tennessee). But the stench of that opening loss at Florida State….how much does that hurt?

Who Has Work To Do, Or Needs Help?

So #10 Notre Dame is now surprisingly in a precarious spot, and they need to root for the chalk to hold Saturday, especially in the Big 12. Obviously they can only get in as an at-large, and with two teams ranked well below them certain to get in as conference champions, they cannot fall below #10. But the bigger risk is if #11 BYU upsets Texas Tech. The Cougars automatically be in the playoff as a conference champion, whether they jump Notre Dame in the final rankings or not. That’s why getting leap-frogged by Alabama was such a big deal. Now it’s possible that if Alabama loses to Georgia they would drop back down to the 10 spot, making the Tide a potential victim if BYU pulls the upset. But that would seem an odd move by the committee. The more I see how this whole rankings thing works, the more confused I get.

Since we touched on BYU already (they must win, or they have no chance) that leaves #12 Miami and #13 Texas as teams who will probably generate a lot of discussion, but have no realistic chance of moving into the field. The Hurricanes are simply the victim of an ACC tie-breaker process that left them out of the conference title game in favor of 7-5 Duke. So if Miami wants to do some lobbying, do it at the next conference meeting. Still, it’s pretty dumb that the best team by far in the conference can’t even play for the title. As for Texas….yeah, you have some great wins on your resume (Oklahoma, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M). And no shame at all in that 7-point loss at Ohio State. The 25-point loss at Georgia is a bit unsightly, but it was losing to 4-win Florida is what truly sank your chances. Sorry, but you gotta take care of business against teams like that.

The ACC-mageddon scenario I’ve alluded to in the past has almost come to fruition. #17 Virginia will play Duke (again, 7-5) for the conference title. If the Cavs win, they are in. We have no idea where the committee would put Duke if they actually ranked every team in FBS, but safe to say it would not be ahead of the AAC champion, or #25 James Madison if they win the Sun Belt, and maybe not even ahead of UNLV if they win the Mountain West. So yeah, the ACC will most likely be left out if Virginia loses. Bad look.

The AAC Championship is a play-in game between #20 Tulane and #24 North Texas, with the winner getting the #12 seed if Virginia wins, or the #11 seed if Duke wins. #25 James Madison must defeat Troy, then hope for chaos in the ACC.

So if the playoff were to be seeded today, here would be the matchups for the first two rounds:

Coaching Carousel

Too much activity to list it all here, but I have random thoughts on a couple things.

I’m not sure how much more there is to say about the Lane Kiffin situation that hasn’t already been said. I’ll just add my 2-cents:

I understand why he thought LSU was a better job than Ole Miss, and respect his right to make that choice
The timing stunk, and that’s not all his fault, but that he did leave Ole Miss just as they were officially set to be in the CFP will never stop being a bad look for him
The belief that he should have been allowed to stay at Ole Miss to coach them in the CFP while also working for LSU is absurd, and Ole Miss made the right decision in telling him to pound sand when he tried to leverage them into letting him do it
Yes, I know the coaches at Tulane (Jon Sumrall to Florida), North Texas (Eric Morris to Oklahoma State) and James Madison (Bob Chesney to UCLA) will be doing exactly that if their teams make it to the playoff. But I don’t believe that’s an apples to apples comparison. Their current teams do not compete against or recruit in the same waters as the teams those coaches will take over.
People talk about feeling sorry for the Ole Miss players. Yeah, I’m sure this was a distraction and change they did not want. But I don’t think we need to take pity on them. Those players will rally around each other and maybe even have a chip on their shoulder to prove to everyone that they, and not Lane Kiffin, are the reason Ole Miss is in the playoff for the first time. The Rebels aren’t one of the favorites to win it all, with or without Kiffin, but they’ll be fine.
Ok, that was more like 5-cents. Sue me.

No idea what is going on at Penn State. They fired James Franklin in October, presumably to get a jump on finding his replacement, and here we are in December and all we know for sure is BYU’s Kalani Sitake turned them down a couple days ago. Um….what have you been doing the past month-and-a-half??? James Franklin found himself another job weeks before you’ll get around to hiring his replacement, for crying out loud. The early signing period for high school players came and went, and only two players signed up for a team with no permanent head coach. Many who were committed have gone elsewhere, including several with Franklin at Virginia Tech. Latest word is they are interested in Iowa State’s Matt Campbell. I think that’d be an excellent choice. Why weren’t you on him weeks ago???

Games of the Week (With the Most CFP Impact)

#24 North Texas at #20 Tulane – 8pm ET (Friday), ABC, Line: North Texas -2.5, O/U 66.5

It’s green on green violence as the Mean Green take on the Green Wave. Both teams will part ways with their head coach after their seasons end. As the over/under indicates, this could be a high-scoring affair in a CFP play-in game. However, the weather in New Orleans currently calls for steady rain, which could be a factor in slowing down the more offense-reliant North Texas. That plus home field makes me lean underdog.

Pick: Tulane win/cover

#11 BYU vs #4 Texas Tech (Arlington, TX) – Noon ET, ABC, Line: Texas Tech -12.5, O/U 49.5

This is a rematch, first won by Texas Tech 29-7, and the game was even more lopsided than the score indicates. In the Cougars defense, leading rusher LJ Martin was hampered by a shoulder injury that day, and they uncharacteristically turned the ball over three times. So I expect a closer game, and unlike the Red Raiders this is do-or-die for BYU. Still, I don’t think it will be enough….Tech is simply the better team.

Pick: Texas Tech win/BYU cover

#9 Alabama vs #3 Georgia – 4:00pm ET, ABC, Line: Georgia -2.5, O/U 48.5

Georgia is just 1-7 against Alabama under Kirby Smart. You know the Bulldogs would love to start evening the ledger. But with no real CFP implications on the line for them I wonder just how focused and committed they’ll be. Alabama should know the result of the Big 12 game by kickoff, and if Texas Tech wins they can probably feel secure in knowing they’re still in if they lose this one. But I have a hunch they’d love to insert a bit of chaos into the rankings and force the committee to move them higher, to at least hosting a first round game in Tuscaloosa. And if BYU wins, they’re likely playing for their playoff lives.

Pick: Alabama win/cover

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College Football 2025 – Where We Stand Headed Into Week 13

Mike Lowe — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 01:33:50 +0000

Only two more weeks to go in the regular season! The playoff field is narrowing, but still plenty of contenders remaining, so let’s dive in.

The Rankings

Ohio State and Indiana appear to be on a collision course to meet in the Big Ten Championship Game. If the chalk holds over the final two games, and given OSU’s recent history against Michigan that’s no sure thing, both teams should end up with a Top 4 seed no matter who wins the title game. If Michigan does win its 5th straight in the series, then it might be time to get out the tie-breaker list, as the Wolverines, Oregon and USC could still have a shot of playing for the Big Ten Championship.

Speaking of Oregon and USC, Saturday’s game at Eugene may essentially be a play-in game for the CFP. The winner will be well-positioned to at least garner an at-large bid. USC would most definitely be out if they pick up their third loss, and Oregon may also be cooked at just two losses but no wins over currently ranked teams to hang their hat on.

Texas A&M is in the driver’s seat in the SEC. They have a tune-up game this week against Samford before playing their first game in Austin in over a decade. As in the case of Michigan-Ohio State, upsets in these rivalry games are always on the table.

While Georgia holds the higher ranking, Alabama still has an edge over them in the SEC standings via the Tide’s head-to-head win. Georgia has the edge over Ole Miss for the same reason. Alabama and Ole Miss do not play this season. So it looks like it will be 4 teams in the mix for the two SEC Championship Game spots. One thing that appears certain is that preseason #1 Texas is toast (if they get in as a 3-loss team, let the ESPN/SEC playoff-rigging theories fly).

Texas Tech and BYU are currently on track to play for the Big 12 title, but a couple upsets could throw things into chaos. Utah, Houston, Cincinnati, and even banged-up defending champ Arizona State remain in the mix. If Cincinnati knocks off BYU Saturday night at home, get ready for a wild finish.

The ACC is a mess, and I’ll mostly leave it at that. Miami is still the highest-ranked and probably best team in the conference, but they are a long shot to get to the conference title game. The ACC-magedon narrative, in which the conference might get completely left out of the CFP because their champion would be ranked below two of the G5 conference champs, looks increasingly less-likely, but still isn’t completely out of the question.

As for the G5, the American race probably settles it all, but the teams at the top are beating each other up, so that doesn’t help in the CFP rankings and leaves an opening for another conference champion. This week it’s Tulane’s turn to be in the Top 25. James Madison from the Sun Belt remains in the mix, with San Diego State out of the Mountain West being a very long shot.

So if the playoff were to be seeded today, here would be the matchups for the first two rounds:

1st Rd – Played at home field of highest ranked team

#24 Tulane at #5 Texas Tech
#13 Miami at #6 Ole Miss
#10 Alabama at #7 Oregon
#9 Notre Dame at #8 Oklahoma

Quarterfinals – Played at TBD bowl site

Oregon/Texas Tech vs #1 Ohio State
Notre Dame/BYU vs #2 Indiana
Virginia/Ole Miss vs #3 Texas A&M
Tulane/Texas Tech vs #4 Georgia

Coaching Watch List

Not only were there no coaches dismissed since our last writing, but one recently-fired coach already found new employment (James Franklin – Virginia Tech) and the top two on the previous list (Luke Fickell – Wisconsin and Mike Locksley – Maryland) were informed they will return in 2026.

Mike Norvell, Florida State – The 5-5 Seminoles have two winnable road games left, at NC State and Florida. Maybe a strong finish where they end up 8-5 saves Norvell’s job. Anything less and I suspect this will be another high-profile opening.
Jonathan Smith, Michigan State – The idea of moving on from a coach after just two seasons seems rough, but the Spartans have regressed after going 5-7 last year, and only a season-ending home date with lowly Maryland may save them from going 0-9 in conference. Since MSU isn’t paying former coach Mel Tucker, who was fired for cause, money may not be as big a factor here.
Shane Beamer, South Carolina – It’s not getting any better in Columbia after the Gamecocks completely collapsed last Saturday, blowing a 30-3 halftime lead at Texas A&M. Pulling off an upset of that magnitude could have ended any hot seat discussion for Beamer. Oh well. And with the Franklin hiring he’s no longer the sentimental choice to go back to his Virginia Tech roots.
Bill Belichick, North Carolina – Do the Giants turn to their past and bring Belichick back to the NFL? Does it matter? The college experiment has clearly failed and a mutual parting of the ways between BB and UNC feels inevitable.

Honorable Mention. Dave Aranda, Baylor – Since going 12-2 and winning the Big 12 title in 2021, the Bears are 22-26 under Aranda. If he’s let go, the SoCal native might be a candidate for the UCLA job.

My Top 12

Ohio State
Texas A&M
Indiana
Texas Tech
Georgia
Ole Miss
Oklahoma
Oregon
Alabama
Notre Dame
Utah
Georgia Tech

Games of the Week

#22 Missouri at #8 Oklahoma – Noon ET, ABC, Line: Oklahoma -7.5, O/U 42.5

I’ll say it again….can someone look at Missouri’s schedule and tell me what they’ve done that is so special as to have them in the rankings? Is simply existing in the SEC worth that much? Now the Sooners best not look past this game or suffer a hangover from last week’s huge win at Alabama, but I don’t think they will.

Pick: Oklahoma win/cover

#15 USC at #7 Oregon – 3:30pm ET, CBS, Line: Oregon -10.5, O/U 59.5

Believe it or not USC is actually well-positioned to claim an at-large playoff bid. A road win against the Ducks and a victory over cross-town rival UCLA the following week would give them a 10-2 record with wins against two currently-ranked teams (#18 Michigan being the other). Meanwhile their only two losses were both on the road, against #9 Notre Dame and #21 Illinois, by a combined total of 12 points. So yeah, that’s probably CFP-worthy. But when was the last time USC went on the road and won a season-defining game like this one? Yeah, I don’t think so either. I actually think the Ducks win this one by exactly 10, so the Trojans would at least cover.

Pick: Oregon win/USC cover

#11 BYU at Cincinnati – 8:00pm ET, FOX, Line: BYU -2.5, O/U 54.5

This was the biggest game I could find that did not include two ranked teams. This won’t be easy for BYU, and a loss likely throws the Big 12 standings deep into the tie-breaker weeds. But I think the Cougars will prevail.

Pick: BYU win/cover

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College Football 2025 – Where We Stand Headed Into Week 11

Mike Lowe — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 16:45:03 +0000

November is here and the regular season is coming to a crescendo. Our first CFP rankings were released on Tuesday, so time to list our gripes!

The CFP Rankings

Here are my random thoughts about the first rankings.

This is more predictive than resume-based, but I still like Texas A&M a little better than Indiana. But I get putting the Hoosiers ahead based on wins at Oregon and Iowa, versus the Aggies win at Notre Dame and an SEC schedule that so far is mostly lower tier teams.

While I won’t quibble too much over one spot, I like Texas Tech just a bit over BYU based on their record against one common opponent: Utah. The Red Raiders beat the Utes 34-10 in Salt Lake City, while the Cougars won 24-21 in Provo. Of course that score will ultimately be settled Saturday.

All in all, the Big 12 sure feels a lot stronger at the top this season than last year, with two teams in the Top 10 and three in the Top 13. Remember last year the eventual champion, Arizona State, didn’t even crack the Top 25 until the third set of rankings were released.

I agree with Oregon at #9 based on a relatively weak slate of wins, but I don’t think they should be punished too harshly based on what has happened to Penn State. The Lions team that took the field that night in Happy Valley is much different than what we’ve seen since then. I really do think the Ducks broke them.

Do we really believe Notre Dame deserves to be ranked as far ahead of Virginia and Louisville as they are? Or even ranked ahead of them at all? Louisville, who have 1-loss vs Notre Dame’s 2, did what the Irish couldn’t – defeat Miami in Miami. And of course the one team that has beaten the Cardinals is the Cavaliers. Are we really giving that much credit to Notre Dame over a 10-point win against USC? Please. At the very least, put the Cavs and Cards ahead of Texas and Oklahoma, a couple of mid SEC squads.

Interesting to see Iowa get some love while the AP poll has shunned them. They don’t have any good wins to hang their hat on, but narrow losses at Iowa State and to Indiana aren’t nothing.

While no Group of Five team cracked the initial rankings, I doubt that will be the case when the final rankings are released. At this point, it’s hard to see anyone other than the American champion getting the CFP bid. Maybe San Diego State has a long shot, but the Mountain West does not have any good wins out of conference this season and the Aztecs’ lone loss so far, to Washington State, is aging very poorly.

So if the playoff were to be seeded today, here would be the matchups for the first two rounds:

1st Rd – Played at home field of highest ranked team

G5 at #5 Georgia
#14 Virginia at #6 Ole Miss
#10 Notre Dame at #7 BYU
#9 Oregon at #8 Texas Tech

Quarterfinals – Played at TBD bowl site

Oregon/Texas Tech vs #1 Ohio State
Notre Dame/BYU vs #2 Indiana
Virginia/Ole Miss vs #3 Texas A&M
G5/Georgia vs #4 Alabama

Coaching Watch List

Two more SEC schools will be searching for new coaches this cycle, as LSU and Auburn parted ways with Brian Kelly and Hugh Freeze, respectively. In LSU’s case, they also parted with AD Scott Woodward whose track record of coaching hires is….not great (he also gave Jimbo Fisher the deal that led to Texas A&M paying what is still the largest buyout in history). Woodward inspired so little confidence that the governor of Louisiana went on The Pat McAfee Show to state that he would have no role in hiring the next head coach, essentially firing the guy live on the air. Having the governor directly intervening into athletic affairs sure makes the vacant AD and head coaching positions at LSU look more appealing, doesn’t it?

1. Luke Fickell, Wisconsin – After being shut out for 11 consecutive quarters the Badgers put a touchdown on the board during garbage time in a loss at Oregon. That’s the good news. Seriously.

2. Mike Locklsey, Maryland – Can Maryland come up with the money to buy out Locksley’s remaining contract? Of equal concern is whether they can afford not to.

3. Mike Norvell, Florida State – Norvell spared his job for at least another week with a blowout victory against Wake Forest that ended a 4-game losing streak and gave the Seminoles their first conference win of the season. Not exactly a reason to breath easy.

4. Jonathan Smith, Michigan State – The good news for the Spartans, winless in the Big Ten, is two of their final three games are against also-winless Penn State and quit-after-September Maryland. But is that really good enough?

Honorable Mention. Shane Beamer, South Carolina – The Gamecocks entered the season with high hopes, a #13 preseason ranking, and a Heisman hopeful in QB LaNorris Sellers. Now, barring a stunning upset at #3 Texas A&M in their next game, they won’t even be bowling.

My Top 12

Ohio State
Texas A&M
Indiana
Alabama
Georgia
Ole Miss
Texas Tech
BYU
Oregon
Utah
Virginia
Louisville

Games of the Week

#7 BYU at #8 Texas Tech – Noon ET, ABC, Line: Texas Tech -10.5, O/U 52.5

Here is your most likely preview of the Big 12 Championship Game – though Cincinnati might still have something to say about that. Having already been dealt a conference loss, this is a much more important game for Texas Tech than BYU, and it’s in Lubbock, so I like the Red Raiders….though laying 10.5 feels too generous.

Pick: Texas Tech win/BYU cover

#3 Texas A&M at #22 Missouri – 3:30pm ET, ESPN, Line: Texas A&M -6.5, O/U 47.5

In my last article I didn’t think Missouri was the 15th best team in the country, and two weeks later I’m not sure they are deserving of 22nd either. But you know what? This feels like a trap game for A&M, coming off a huge blowout win at LSU and the hype of the #3 CFP ranking. Better watch out, Aggies, this game has the makings of a rock fight.

Pick: Texas A&M win/Missouri cover

#9 Oregon at #20 Iowa – 3:30pm ET, CBS, Line: Oregon -6.5, O/U 40.5

Kinnick Stadium has long been a house of horrors for visiting Top 10 teams, and I’m not getting great vibes from Oregon after that Indiana loss. Yeah, they crossed the country and boat-raced Rutgers immediately after that, but then struggled against a game, but offensively anemic Wisconsin team the following week. Iowa remains who they have always been – a team that can really fluster opposing offenses with good defense, ball control, and field position. The Ducks persevered and eventually prevailed in that style of game at Penn State, but Iowa is a better team. I smell upset.

Pick: Iowa win/cover

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College Football 2025 – Where We Stand Headed Into Week 9

Mike Lowe — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 00:05:49 +0000

We are down to just six remaining unbeaten FBS teams, and if you would have guessed before the season that Georgia Tech, Navy and Indiana would be among them, I’d like to talk to you about your Powerball jackpot thoughts. Meanwhile, the buyouts for coaches fired so far this season has surpassed $100M, and $200M is well within reach. But hey, it’s only money.

Let’s Catch Up

Week 8 saw four teams among the AP Top 10 fall.

Beginning with last Friday, then #2 Miami lost its first game of the season, 24-21 to a Louisville team that came into South Florida unranked. It was a mostly sloppy showing for the ‘Canes, low-lighted by four Carson Beck interceptions thrown and an anemic 2.6 yards per carry by a typically potent Miami running game. While the Cardinals are a good team and there is no shame in losing to them, it was a result that has often typified Mario Cristobal teams, where the execution doesn’t consistently match the talent. Fortunately for Miami, the 12-team playoff is a much more forgiving format for hiccups like this, but it does nothing to dispel the narrative that Cristobal’s teams fizzle as the season wears on.

What world are we living in? Vanderbilt went into a game as the betting favorite over #10 LSU. Yes, you read that correctly. Not only that, but ESPN’s win predictor had them as the likely winner through all 60 minutes. Following the 31-24 victory the Commodores got a nice little bump in the AP rankings from #17 to #10.

Top 10 Vanderbilt???? I know what you’re thinking – and yes, I do have the answer. The last time the Commodores were ranked in the AP Top 10 was October 13, 1947. What else was going on that day, you ask? Well, the US engaged in an experiment to seed a hurricane with dry ice in what was dubbed Project Cirrus, and….it didn’t go well, as the storm took an unexpected change in direction and made landfall in Georgia, causing significant damage. In lighter news from that day, the first ever NHL All Star Game was played, and rock legend Sammy Hagar was born.

As for the Tigers, their playoff hopes are on life support, with back-to-bak games against #3 Texas A&M and #4 Alabama up next. Looks like another disappointing season is in the cards for Brian Kelly in Baton Rouge.

Ole Miss was dealt their first loss of the season at Georgia, a game in which their offense scored five touchdowns on their first five possessions, but then went dormant for the remainder of the game. The Rebels defense, on the other hand, failed to hold the Bulldogs scoreless on a single possession until the game-ending kneel-down. Luckily for the Rebels, they don’t face any potent offenses for the remainder of the season, so they still have solid playoff hopes.

As for the Bulldogs, they are now 2-1 in games against ranked opponents, and in each case their defense started out pretty poorly as they were forced to storm back against Tennessee and Ole Miss, while coming up just short against Alabama. The playoff and SEC title are still within their grasp, but they need to get off to better starts going forward.

Finally, Arizona State kept alive their hopes of returning to the playoff with a huge win over then #7 Texas Tech, 26-22. The return of QB Sam Leavitt for the Sun Devils after sitting out a loss at Utah due to injury made the difference. ASU is a much different team with him, and they will have to hope he stays healthy to get back in the Big 12 title game.

Meanwhile the Red Raiders will have a good chance to bounce back this week against lowly Oklahoma State, who are still searching for their first win against an FBS team. And while their fans are no doubt looking ahead to a huge showdown against #11 BYU in Lubbock on November 8, the team best not overlook what could be a tricky game at Kansas State the week before that.

Coaching Watch List

If you count the (dis)Honorable Mention, three more coaches from my last list joined the count of the unemployed. But don’t feel too bad for Billy Napier or James Franklin, as they are guaranteed to collect $21M and $45M, respectively. Trent Bray will only get $3.6M from Oregon State, so he may need to tighten his belt a bit. As always though, the coaching carousel proceeds on.

1. Luke Fickell, Wisconsin – The Badgers have been shut out in their last two games, both at home, and now head to #6 Oregon as a 33.5 point underdog. AD Chris McIntosh gave Fickell the dreaded vote of confidence, but when you look at the brutal schedule the Badgers still have ahead it’s really hard to envision this going on much longer.

2. Mike Locklsey, Maryland – That’s now three straight, and counting, blown 4th Quarter leads for the Terps following their 20-17 loss at UCLA. They also continue their trend of post-September futility. Since college football isn’t moving its season calendar to July thru September anytime soon, it seems Maryland will have to be the one to make a change to improve the situation at College Park.

3. Mike Norvell, Florida State – It no longer feels like we’re talking about the same season when we refer to the Seminoles’ Week 1 domination of Alabama. Both teams have been on vastly different trajectories since then, but this is about FSU. I’m sure it’s never easy for an Eastern time zone team to travel to the West Coast and play a game that kicks off at 10:30pm ET, but the ‘Noles ugly loss at Stanford (their fourth straight) cannot be excused. FSU says it will wait until after the season before making any decision on Norvell’s status, but with his team now completely out of the playoff picture and simply battling for bowl eligibility, it doesn’t look good.

4. Hugh Freeze, Auburn – The SEC is an unforgivable gauntlet, and the Tigers’ four straight losses have all come against ranked opponents. Nonetheless, looking at the rest of the schedule a six win season would appear to be the likely best case. Auburn is no stranger to having multiple head coaches on its payroll – as of last season they were still paying Gus Malzahn and Bryan Harsin along with Freeze. Some things never change.

Honorable Mention: Bill Belichick, North Carolina – This has been a predictable train wreck almost since the day he was hired. There really isn’t much more to say.

My Top 12

Ohio State
Indiana
Texas A&M
Alabama
Georgia
Georgia Tech
Oregon
Miami
Vanderbilt
Ole Miss
BYU
Texas Tech

Games of the Week

#8 Ole Miss at #13 Oklahoma – Noon ET, ABC, Line: Oklahoma -4.5, O/U 54.5

After suffering a surprising first defeat against Texas, Oklahoma got right with a dominating 26-7 win at South Carolina. In his second game back following hand surgery, QB John Mateer had a better, though not spectacular, day than in his first game back against the Longhorns in which he threw 3 picks. But thanks to a stifling Sooner defense, it was plenty good enough.

Of course, I already talked about the recent struggles of Ole Miss’s defense. So I guess what I’m saying is, this looks like a perfect opportunity for the Sooner offense to really get on track.

Pick: Oklahoma win/cover

#15 Missouri at #10 Vanderbilt – 3:30pm ET, ESPN, Line: Vanderbilt -2.5, O/U 52.5

Based on their schedule, in which their most impressive result might be a 3-point loss at home to Alabama, I’m really not getting Top 15 vibes from Mizzou. With ESPN College Gameday in Nashville for this one, I like the home team.

Pick: Vanderbilt win/cover

#3 Texas A&M at #20 LSU – 7:30pm ET, ABC, Line: Texas A&M -2.5, O/U 48.5

The Aggies had to fend off a feisty Arkansas team in Fayetteville last week, pulling out a 45-42 win. The result doesn’t necessarily instill confidence in their chances going to Death Valley. Points will likely be hard to come by for A&M, and despite an anemic LSU offense it feels like this could be a very tight affair against a team fighting for their season and maybe their coach’s job.

Pick: LSU win/cover

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College Football 2025 – Where We Stand Headed Into Week 7

Mike Lowe — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 01:00:32 +0000

Can you believe we are about to reach the halfway point of the season? Where has the time gone? So what have we learned so far? Well, three of the teams ranked in the Top 4 of the AP preseason poll (#1 Texas, #2 Penn State, #4 Clemson) all have multiple losses, at least one coming to an unranked opponent, and are currently out of the poll completely. Nothing wrong with preseason polls. They generate discussion. But once the games begin, you simply have to take everything you assumed about teams over the summer and check it at the door.

Let’s Catch Up

Week 6 was lighter on marquee matchups, but not on consequential results.

We’ll start with the lede, that being the teams with championship hopes entering the season that have crashed and burned. Clemson faded out of the picture from the get-go, so no need to go too deep into them other than mention that last week they further exposed what a farce the Bill Belichick Experiment at UNC has been so far. So the Tigers have that going for them at least.

Texas went to Gainesville to take on a reeling Florida team that is likely in a fight just to be bowl eligible, and took a 29-21 loss. Arch Manning had another mediocre showing, though he got no help from his line in the from of protection or a running game. The Gators were coming off three straight losses in which their defense played well enough to win, but couldn’t get enough out of QB DJ Lagway. But with their backs against the wall the sophomore turned in a solid performance. They’ll need it again this week, and in a much more hostile environment, as Florida heads to College Station to face #5 Texas A&M. As for the Longhorns, it feels like every game from here on is a must-win if they are to make the playoff, and that journey starts Saturday at Dallas against #6 Oklahoma. Arch Manning and a struggling OL against one of the top defenses in the country? We saw that in Week 1, and it didn’t end well for the ‘Horns.

Following a heartbreaking double-overtime loss to Oregon in their annual White Out game in Week 5, Penn State failed to respond in an embarrassing 42-37 loss to previously winless UCLA. The Lions fell behind 27-7 at halftime, and just couldn’t claw back before time expired. They still had a margin of error after the Oregon loss to get into the playoff, but that may have gone up in smoke. The Lions still have games at home against Indiana and at Ohio State remaining on the schedule. If they lose just one of those it becomes hard to imagine a 3-loss team, with one of those coming against the likes of UCLA, getting in.

Finally, in the biggest game of Week 6 Miami held on to defeat their rival, Florida State, 28-22. This game was another case study in why some, myself included, still have trouble declaring the Hurricanes a true title favorite despite clearly possessing the talent. For three quarters they looked unbeatable, holding a commanding 28-3 lead in a hostile environment. But then, as so often has been the case for Mario Cristobal-coached teams, they lost their edge and the Seminoles reeled off 19 4th Qtr points. How great was the threat of FSU actually pulling off an improbable comeback? Maybe not as much as the score might indicate, but if the Seminoles had simply got a lucky bounce on one of their three onside kick attempts, we could very easily be having a different conversation. Cristobal is who he is at this point, but it’s still a shock to see him continue to take his foot off the gas too soon, and apparently he has not learned how hard it is to regain momentum in those situations.

Coaching Watch List

Maybe it’s time for me to rename this the Coaching Reverse Jinx Watch List. After making the list for two weeks in a row, Virginia’s Tony Elliott went and got consecutive overtime wins at home against then-#8 Florida State and on the road at then-unbeaten Louisville. Now the Cavaliers find themselves ranked 19th in the AP. From the hot seat to Coach of the Year candidate. As much as we talk about the coaching carousel, you gotta love redemption stories like this. Well done, Coach Elliott.

1. Trent Bray, Oregon State – Two more frustrating, heart-breaking losses for the Beavers, in what they hoped would be a nice season with at least a bowl appearance. Now they are 0-6 and staring into an abyss. Within the last week their general manager resigned and the special teams coordinator was fired, but that feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic at this point. A complete tear-down feels both inevitable and necessary.

2. Billy Napier, Florida – Napier once again appears to have staved off termination. But there is still a feeling that it’s only postponing the inevitable when you look at the Gators’ still-brutal remaining schedule. The SEC is an absolute bloodbath this year, so if he can somehow get the four more wins needed for bowl eligibility maybe that will, and should, be enough for one more year. But the standards and expectations at Florida are much higher than 6-6.

3. Luke Fickell, Wisconsin – After the brutal loss at home to Maryland and a bye, the Badgers hit the road and played valiantly against Michigan. But the result was the same….an anemic offense gave them little chance. Unfortunately for Fickell the schedule does not get any friendlier, and a winless conference record might not be out of the question if Wisconsin can’t generate some offense.

4. Mike Locklsey, Maryland – I know the Terps are currently 4-1, and expectations at Maryland aren’t especially high, but the Terrapins now have a very well-established pattern of post-September futility. Not counting the COVID season, under Locksley they are 21-5 in Aug-Sep, and 10-29 in Oct-Dec. That didn’t change course last Saturday, as they blew a 20-point, late 3rd Qtr lead to Washington and fell 24-20. Inexplicably, it also dropped Locksley to 0-8 at Maryland following a bye. With a recently-hired AD on board, Maryland might deem it time to make a change if the team doesn’t reverse the trend.

Honorable Mention. James Franklin, Penn State – Credit Franklin for not hiding from the truth following the loss to Oregon, which dropped his record against Top 6 teams to 4-21. He acknowledged the narrative he doesn’t win big games is real and factual, and until he starts flipping that stat it won’t go away. But then came the inexcusable UCLA debacle. Penn State would owe him $50M if it fired him after the season. That’s a lot to swallow for a coach who has won over 70% of his games and got the team to the CFP semifinals last year. But it’s fair to wonder how much longer simply being on the doorstep will be enough for PSU.

My Top 12

Ohio State
Miami
Oregon
Texas A&M
Oklahoma
Ole Miss
Texas Tech
Alabama
Indiana
Georgia
Georgia Tech
LSU

Games of the Week

#1 Ohio State at #17 Illinois – Noon ET, FOX, Line: Ohio State -14.5, O/U 49.5

I’m having a hard time seeing how the Illini will score enough points on the Buckeye defense, which is #1 in FBS in points allowed (5.0 pg) and #3 in yards allowed (215.8 pg). And while 14.5 points sounds like a lot for even the top-ranked team to lay on the road against a ranked opponent, OSU won by 18 two weeks ago against a tougher opponent (Washington) in a tougher venue.

Pick: Ohio State win/cover

#8 Alabama at #14 Missouri – Noon ET, ABC, Line: Alabama -3.5, O/U 51.5

The Tide have righted the ship after that opening loss at FSU, having beaten two straight ranked SEC opponents (Georgia and Vanderbilt). I’m still concerned with their running numbers, both offensively and defensively. But they should be fine against a Missouri team that has yet to face a ranked opponent.

Pick: Alabama win/cover

Indiana at Oregon – 3:30pm ET, CBS, Line: Oregon -7.5, O/U 55.5

This is the Hoosiers’ big chance to prove they are different than last year’s team that took advantage of a friendly schedule to make it to the playoff. They don’t necessarily have to win, but if they can go to Eugene and cover then I’ll believe they are a legitimate Top 10 team. The matchup features two potential 1st Round NFL QBs in Fernando Mendoza and Dante Moore, but I’ll be watching the defenses in this one. Both are Top 10 in FBS in points and yards allowed. Very evenly matched, well-coached teams. Turnovers and Indiana’s ability to execute its offense in a very loud environment feel like the keys to this game.

Pick: Oregon win/Indiana cover

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College Football 2025 – Where We Stand Headed Into Week 5

Mike Lowe — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 04:10:17 +0000

Only four weeks into the season and we’ve already seen three head coaches fired. The coaching carousel churns on in college football! As we get into the meat of conference schedules we will begin to separate pretenders from contenders. And plenty of great matchups this week to break down. So without further ado…

Let’s Catch Up

We had three matchups featuring two ranked teams, and we definitely need to talk about them.

Let’s start with the Big Ten. #9 Illinois and #19 Indiana met as ranked teams for the first time since 1950, but only one of them looked the part, as the Hoosiers blasted the Illini 63-10. This game was a shocker in large part because Indiana played a marshmallow soft non-conference schedule and did not look impressive against the toughest of those foes, Old Dominion. Illinois’ schedule wasn’t much better, but they did at least log a blowout win at Duke. Still, many were right to be skeptical.

So where does this leave each team’s CFP hopes? I had this circled as a key game for Illinois to pick up a good win for their resume. They get another chance when #21 USC comes to town on Saturday. They also get #1 Ohio State in Champaign on October 11th. They have to find a way to win at least one of those. The Hoosiers have tough road games at Oregon and Penn State, but no other teams currently ranked on their schedule, so this one might have been critical. And they delivered in a big way.

Another eye-opener was in the Big 12, when #17 Texas Tech visited Salt Lake City to take on #16 Utah. This one started out as a defensive slugfest, but then the Red Raiders went to backup QB Will Hammond in the second half and he finished the game with four straight scoring drives to seal an impressive 34-10 road win. Tech notably spent a lot of money putting together this year’s roster, and it’s showing. Meanwhile the Utes will need to shake this loss off quickly. After a trip to West Virginia they have critical conference matchups against Arizona State and at BYU. (and why are we playing the Holy War in the middle of the season and not the end?)

Finally #11 Oklahoma got its second win in three games against a ranked opponent with a hard fought win against #22 Auburn. The Sooners are now 4-0 (1-0) and look like they could make some noise in the SEC. That’s the good news. Now the bad news. QB John Mateer suffered a broken bone in his hand during the game that required surgery and will keep him out for about a month. That means he’s likely to miss games against Texas, South Carolina and Ole Miss, but can hopefully return to face Tennessee on Nov 1. Still, OU’s offense has struggled greatly without him, and their defense (which looks very good once again) must pick up the slack.

Coaching Watch List

Two names from my previous list, Virginia Tech’s Brent Pry and Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy, are already gone. So is UCLA’s Deshaun Foster. But there are still plenty of hot seats to go around.

1. Billy Napier, Florida – It’s not getting any better, or easier, for Napier. After losses at LSU and Miami, in which the offense looked mostly inept, the Gators now sit at 1-3. Oh, and they now get to do the Texas two-step against the #10 Longhorns and at the #9 Aggies. Is the mercy rule in effect here? At least Florida won’t lose this weekend….they have a bye.

2. Trent Bray, Oregon State – How did I manage to leave Bray off my first list after Week 1 and 2 debacles in which the Beavers couldn’t execute even the simplest of football actions, like snapping the football cleanly? Since then the Beavs have been outscored 86-21 in two games. Forgive the pun, but the dam has burst in Corvallis

3. Luke Fickell, Wisconsin – I truly thought Fickell was an excellent hire for Wisconsin, but sometimes what looks like a home run ends up being just a long fly ball. After leading the Badgers to their first losing season since 2001 last year, they stand at 2-2 and were just dominated at home by Maryland.

4. Tony Elliott, Virginia – After getting a win against lowly Stanford, Elliott gets a bit of a reprieve and drops from #3 to 4 on my list. And the ACC schedule is looking a little friendlier now than it once did. Maybe even a bowl game is possible?

Honorable Mention. Dabo Swinney, Clemson – He has a huge buyout (about $60M) and I’m not sure Clemson can marshall the resources to manage that. And yeah, there’s the matter of those two titles he won the prior decade. But as we know all too well, a ‘chip only buys you so much time.

My Top 12

Ohio State
Miami
Penn State
Oregon
Georgia
LSU
Oklahoma
Texas A&M
Florida State
Texas Tech
Indiana
Ole Miss

Games of the Week

USC at Illinois – Noon ET, FOX, Line: USC -6.5, O/U 60.5

Life comes at you fast. Think back to one week ago….Illinois was ranked #9 and riding high. Could you imagine then they’d be nearly a touchdown underdog at home to a team coming in from the West Coast (that is not named Oregon) for a 9am PT kickoff? Yet here we are. I’m not sure to what degree we should write off that debacle at Indiana as a fluke, but I’m sure the Illini will be well-motivated to wash the taste of that mess out of their mouths. I’m also not sure what to make of USC at this point. They kinda pass the eye test. Their best win so far came last week at the Coliseum against Michigan State, but that was still a one-score game halfway into the 4th Qtr. I’ve seen this movie before, and I’m not buying stock in the Trojans just yet.

Pick: Illinois win/cover

LSU at Ole Miss – 3:30pm ET, ABC, Line: Ole Miss -1.5, O/U 55.5

Big early SEC tilt with likely playoff implications. It’s a classic “Something’s Gotta Give” matchup, as LSU’s anemic #112 ranked rushing offense faces the Rebels’ #122 turnstile rushing defense. To add to the Tigers’ woes, QB Garrett Nussmeier has been less than impressive so far this season, despite LSU’s usual bevy of receiving weapons. On the flip side, it will be interesting to see how Lane Kiffin’s high-octane offense attacks a very stout LSU defense. The oddsmakers pretty much have it right, as this really feels like a coin flip. I lean with the home team on this one

Pick: Ole Miss win/cover

Oregon at Penn State – 7:30pm ET, NBC, Line: Penn State -3.5, O/U 51.5

It’s the first real test for these two title hopefuls. The Lions are coming off a bye following an extremely soft non-conference schedule. QB Drew Allar has been okay so far, albeit very untested. Of course the Lions’ bread is buttered in the running game with the best tandem in the sport, Kaytron Allen and Nic Singleton. Ducks QB Dante Moore has begun to live up to his 5-star billing, and true freshman WR Dakorien Moore has stepped up to fill in for the injured Evan Stewart. How Oregon’s defense plays will likely determine the outcome in this game. Despite losing, the Lions rushed for 297 yards (8.7 ypc) when the two squared off in the Big Ten championship game last year. Oregon will not be so fortunate if PSU comes anywhere near that number again.

Pick: Penn State win/cover

Alabama at Georgia – 7:30pm ET, ABC, Line: Georgia -3.5, O/U 52-5

At long last, for the first time since 2015 Georgia gets Alabama in Athens instead of Atlanta, where the Tide have gone 4-0 against head coach Kirby Smart. Both teams are coming off bye weeks, as Georgia’s last game was a come-from-behind overtime thriller at Tennessee, while Alabama cruised at home against Wisconsin. We’ll find out now if the Tide have exorcised the demons of an ugly season-opening loss at Florida State. The good news is the Bulldogs allowed 371 passing yards in Knoxville, and Alabama’s passing game has been much more effective than its ground game so far. On the other hand, I’d be concerned about Alabama’s defense (how many times has anyone had to write that over the years?). The Tide have struggled on third downs (119th in FBS) and in the red zone (112th). The sample size is still relatively small just three games in, but does not sound promising for pulling off a road upset against a Top 5 opponent.

Pick: Georgia win/cover

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College Football 2025 – Reviewing Week 4, Previewing Week 5

Chris Stoner — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 18:35:53 +0000

After four weeks of games, there is growing clarity of the college football landscape.

All percentages mentioned below, come from ESPN’s Match-Up Predictor.

Week 4 Quick Hits

Miami 26 Florida 7 – A third consecutive loss for the Gators is a storyline; but the Hurricanes looking like a legitimate power is a larger one. Florida was 0 for 13 on 3rd down. Some combination of their own ineptitude and some credit to Miami. Miami’s Carson Beck only had 160 yards, but the Hurricanes were able to rush for nearly 200 yards. Four Miami players had at-least four catches. Four sacks for the Miami defense.

Oregon 41 Oregon State 6 – Just an unfair in-state match-up at this point. Maybe Oregon State’s program starts trending up next year with the new revival of the Pac 12. The Ducks continue to take care of business. Through four games, Oregon has allowed just 37 points. QB Dante Moore threw for 4 TD’s, and 305 yards. He now has 11 TD’s, against 1 pick on the year. 280 yards rushing for Oregon, and three different receivers had at-least 60 yards receiving.

Florida State 66 Kent State 10 – Tommy Castellanos was 10 of 13 (in his three games as a Seminole, Castellanos has 38 total attempts) for 205 yards. He also ran it 7 times for 54 yards and 2 scores. 498 yards on the ground and 8 TD’s for the Seminoles rushing offense. Yes, Kent State is a below average MAC team, but that’s still an impressive showing for FSU.

Texas 55 Sam Houston State 0 – Conference USA’s SHST is now 0-4. Texas blowing them out isn’t surprising or impressive. It is worth noting though that Arch Manning had 309 yards passing with 3 TD’s, and he ran for two more scores. He punctuated one score with some smack talk. He was feeling himself. It only matters if he builds off of this, but if this outing got his confidence back up (and his mechanics were more sound than they had been in the previous three weeks); that’s a good thing for the Longhorns. 607 total yards for Texas. SHST was 2 of 14 on 3rd down, and 0 for 2 on 4th. Texas Sophomore WR Ryan Wingo (6’2, 214lbs) had 93 yards receiving and 2 scores.

Indiana 63 Illinois 10 – Yikes. This was one of the more interesting games of the weekend going into Week 4, but by halftime the Hoosiers were 35-10. Indiana HC Curt Cignetti was quoted postgame as saying, “We broke their will.” Yeah, that will happen when you run for 312 yards, and hold the opponent to 2 rushing yards. A Bret Bielema team dominated physically? A 53 point loss is going to stick with the College Football Committee even if Illinois rebounds. Indiana served some notice here, that they intend to get back to the CFP. Despite the halftime lead, they did not ease off the gas. That’s fully about building their resume. Junior QB Fernando Mendoza has now thrown for 975 yards, and 14 TD’s without a pick. This is back-to-back weeks with 5 TD’s for him, and he’s been 40 of 43 on his attempts. The Indiana defense had 7 sacks, and a pick.

Oklahoma 24 Auburn 17 – SEC fans seemed to enjoy Oklahoma struggling last year in their introduction to their new conference. The Sooners look more like a traditional OU team this year. QB John Mateer is regarded as one of the best college QBs. The Sooners defense was able to sack Auburn 9 times!

Ole Miss 45 Tulane 10 – Tulane might contender for an American Athletic Conference title this year, but a result that reminds that there are levels to this! The Rebels Senior QB Trinidad Chambliss threw for 307 yards, and ran for 112 more.

Texas Tech 34 Utah 10 – I knew that the Red Raiders spent a lot of NIL money acquiring their roster; but I went into this game anticipating the Utes would win at home. This was a 13-10 game with 10 minutes left, but it was all Texas Tech down the stretch as the Red Raiders would put up three unanswered TD’s. An important road Big 12 conference win for TT. Utah typically has a strong defense. They let up 484 yards here, and TT was 9 of 17 on 3rd. Texas Tech starting QB Behren Morton left the game in the 3rd with a concussion. Will Hammond came on, and was 13 of 16 for 169 yards and 2 scores. Hammond also ran for 61 yards. Not a bad half from him!

Memphis 32 Arkansas 31 – The Tigers improved to 4-0, and will be favored in each of their remaining AAC games after beating the SEC’s Razorbacks.

Tulsa 19 Oklahoma State 12 – Mike Gundy has been the Oklahoma State Head Coach since 2005. He’s won 170 games for the Cowboys, including a second Fiesta Bowl win in 2021. He’s a 3x Big 12 Coach of the Year, and has had 11 teams end the year ranked. He’s also coming off of a 3-9, 0-9 season and is now 1-2 to begin ’25. This was a Tulsa team which got destroyed by Navy last week, and had also lost to New Mexico State. Things aren’t going to get easier for OSU as the Big 12 conference schedule begins.

Syracuse 34 Clemson 21 – Clemson came into the year as the recognized favorite in the ACC, with expectations of not just reaching the CFP – but being a factor once there. They’re now 1-3, and 0-2 in the ACC. Playoff talk is done, and Clemson fans seem to be tiring of Head Coach Dabo Swinney. Swinney took over Clemson in 2008. He’s won 181 games for the Tigers. That includes two National Championships, and four National Championship Game appearances. They’ve been ranked at the end of each season since 2011. But after finishing 1st to 4th Nationally each year from 2015 to 2020; they’ve spent the last four years finishing somewhere between 11th to 20th. They expected a return to dominance this year. Instead they’re entering Week 5 not ranked.

Reviewing The Conferences

AAC – Navy is 2-0 in conference. North Texas, and Rice are both 1-0. Memphis, South Florida, and Tulane have yet to play a conference game.

ACC – Georgia Tech is 4-0 overall, and has the head-to-head vs. Clemson. Miami and Florida State are both in the National Top 10.

Big 12 – Iowa State and Texas Tech are both 4-0 overall, and 1-0 in league play. Houston is 3-0 overall, 1-0 in the Big 12. BYU, TCU, and UCF are each 3-0, and have yet to play a game within the Big 12.

Big Ten – Ohio State and Penn State are 1 and 2 Nationally, but haven’t played a game in the Conference. Oregon is 6th Nationally, 4-0 overall, 1-0 in the conference. USC is 4-0, 2-0 in the league. Indiana and Maryland are both 4-0 overall, with a league win. Washington is 3-0, and hasn’t played a Big Ten game yet.

Conference USA – Delaware, Louisiana Tech, and Western Kentucky are each 3-1 overall, and 1-0 in the conference.

Mid-American – Buffalo, Bowling Green, Central Michigan, Ohio, and Toledo are each 2-2 overall, with Buffalo and Western Michigan both 1-0 within the conference.

Mountain West – Fresno State is 4-1 overall, 1-0 in the MW. Utah State, and Boise Stare are 3-1, and 2-1 respectfully; each 1-0 in the league.

SEC – The are 10 ranked teams in the SEC. Ole Miss is 2-0 in the league. LSU, Missouri, Oklahoma, Vanderbilt, Georgia, each 1-0 in the SEC. LSU, Georgia, Texas, and Texas A&M each in the National Top 10.

Sun Belt – Coastal Carolina, and Southern Miss are both 1-0 in the conference. Texas State is 3-1 overall.

Week 5 Games of Note

USC at Illinois – Can the Trojans get to 3-0 in the conference? Does Illinois rebound by Indiana?

Ohio State at Washington – The Buckeyes are a 10.5 point favorite, and given a 68.8% chance of winning.

LSU at Ole Miss – LSU is the 3rd ranked team in the country, but given just a 26.7% chance of winning at Ole Miss.

Oregon at Penn State – The Nittany Lions were off in Week 4. In Week 5, they host the Ducks. PSU is a 3.5 point favorite, and given a 51.1% chance of winning at home.

Alabama at Georgia – Both of these teams were off in Week 4. Georgia opens as a 3.5 point favorite against the Crimson Tide, and the Bulldogs are given a 54.8% chance of winning at home.

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College Football 2025 – Week 3 Overview

Chris Stoner — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 22:38:00 +0000

Week 3 delivered another wild slate of games, with preseason perceptions giving way to regular season realities.

All percentages mentioned below, come from ESPN’s Match-Up Predictor.

Week 3 Quick Hits

Georgia 44 Tennessee 41 – Fun game with the SEC rivals. The Bulldogs needed OT to extend their winning streak over Tennessee to 9. The Knoxville faithful were loud, and things looked good for the Volunteers early; but Georgia overcame the 21-7 1st Quarter deficit and came back to win. Certainly feel for Tennessee’s kicker not being able to knock through the would-have been game winner to end regulation. Georgia puts the quality road W on their resume, while the Vols missed the opportunity for the big home win. Georgia now has a week off before facing Alabama at home. Tennessee has a tune-up vs. UAB before returning to SEC play with a trip to Mississippi State.

LSU 20 Florida 10 – The Tigers improved to 3-0, doing enough to beat Florida at home. LSU didn’t get a huge game from QB Garrett Nussmeier, but the Tigers defense picked off 5 passes. LSU gets an automatic W next week vs. SE Louisiana, prior to going to Ole Miss the following week.

Texas A&M 41 Notre Dame 40 – The Irish fell to 0-2, and without the ability to play themselves into a conference championship; their margin for error in getting back to the College Football Playoff is thin. Even if they win out over their remaining 10 games, that might not be enough for an at-large bid. A&M gets a week off before hosting Auburn to begin their SEC play on 9/27. Even if Notre Dame can not play their way into the CFP, they figure to win enough games this year, where this win will be significant for A&M. A&M has four currently ranked teams remaining on their schedule.

Ohio State, Penn State, and Oregon did what was expected of them vs. Ohio, Villanova, and Northwestern. Oregon led their fellow Big Ten opponent 31-0 before the Wildcats had two late scores.

The Buckeyes travel to Washington face the Huskies on 9/27. Ohio State is a 76.5% favorite in that game.

Penn State also gets a week off, before hosting Oregon 9/27.

Oregon will host in-state rival Oregon State this week, and are a 98.7% favorite to arrive at Penn State undefeated.
Looking ahead to that game vs. the Nittany Lions, PSU is currently a 51.9% favorite to win at home vs. the Ducks.

Miami 49 South Florida 12 – South Florida had beat Boise State, and Florida the first two weeks. Against the Hurricanes, the Bulls were down 28-6 at halftime, and ended up giving up 576 yards of offense. Carson Beck was picked twice, but did throw for 340 yards and 3 scores. Miami gets Florida this week at home, and are a 75.2% favorite to be 4-0 when they travel to Tallahassee to face the Seminoles October 4th. Despite this uncompetitive game, things look pretty good overall for USF. Looking at their remaining schedule, they’ll be a slight dog vs. North Texas, and significant underdog vs. Memphis; but they’ve got an opportunity to win the American Athletic Conference.

Illinois 38 Western Michigan 0 – The Fighting Illini are in the Top 10 Nationally, but seemingly working under the radar. They’ve got an interesting game coming up Saturday, when they travel to Bloomington to face Indiana. The Hoosiers are currently a 62.8% favorite there. Indiana is coming off of a 73-0 beating of Indiana State.

Texas 27 UTEP 10 – Arch Manning throwing for 114 yards against a CUSA team at home, surely didn’t give the Longhorn faithful a ton of confidence. Texas gets another tune-up Saturday vs. Sam Houston state before traveling to face Florida October 4th.

Georgia Tech 24 Clemson 21 – An OT home win for the Yellow Jackets. The Tigers entered the year with a lot of people (including those in the Clemson program) expecting them to be back as a real force Nationally. Three weeks into the year, they’ve got two losses. Unlike Notre Dame, they’ve still got a chance to play for a conference championship. Florida State is the lone ranked team remaining on their schedule. The Ramblin’ Wreck of Georgia Tech improved to 3-0. The only ranked game remaining on their schedule is Georgia to end the regular season. They’ll be favored in every game prior to facing the Bulldogs.

Week 4 Games of Note

Florida at Miami – As mentioned above, the Hurricanes are significant favorites here.

Illinois at Indiana – Again, Indiana is a 62.8% favorite to get the home win.

Texas Tech at Utah – Two 3-0 Big 12 teams. TT had a lot of transfers into their program. Utah had an injury riddled initial year in their new conference. The Utes are a 65% favorite at home.

Auburn at Oklahoma – Two 3-0 SEC teams. The Sooners a 65.3% favorite.

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