Indiana repeat? Georgia back on top? Hawai’i in? Who could be in the 2026 CFP

One cycle ends, the next one begins. The circle of life and whatnot. With the 2025 college football season in the books, we now move on to 2026. Mark Schlabach’s Way-Too-Early Top 25 is out, so it’s time for the next step in the predictions process: Let’s talk about who will make the College Football Playoff.

Granted, we incredibly don’t know for sure what next year’s CFP will look like for sure — hey, you can’t rush these things, we might only need another three or four years of debates in fancy hotel ballrooms before reaching an obvious answer. Since, however, a 12-team playoff has turned out to be a lot of fun, we stick with 12 for a while longer. If we simply used Schlabach’s rankings for this exercise, we’d be looking at a 12-team field resembling this:

First round

• 9 Ole Miss at 8 Miami (winner plays 1 Indiana)

• 12 ???* at 5 Oregon (winner plays 4 Georgia)

• 11 BYU at 6 Ohio State (winner plays 3 Notre Dame)

• 10 Texas A&M at 7 Texas Tech (winner plays 2 Texas)

(* There was no Group of 5 representative in Schlabach’s list as, between the coaching carousel and the talent drain that is the transfer portal, there’s no obvious standout in the pool.)

In terms of expectations, that’s a perfectly sound place to start. But this sport likes to scoff at best-laid plans sometimes — just ask Texas (No. 2 on Schlabach’s list last January), Penn State (No. 3), Clemson (No. 7), LSU (No. 8) and South Carolina (No. 10). We get a lot of things right, but this sport still sets us up to whiff a lot. Keeping expectations in mind, then, let’s talk about how this race will really go. Each conference title race brings certain rules to the table; for that matter, so do the battles for at-large bids and the Group of 5 auto bid.

So here’s what we’re going to do: Instead of simply looking at “Who are the best teams on paper?” we’re going to create some rules, some old-school heuristics, to guide us through precisely how this CFP race will play out. I enjoyed this exercise last year; sure, it correctly predicted only four of 12 playoff teams, but hey, using the Way-Too-Early only predicted three! This stuff’s hard! And last year’s rules don’t even have to change that much.

Big Ten champion

The rule: It will be won by the best team not named Ohio State.

We’ll start with the conference that has produced the past three national champions. Ohio State won the national title in 2024 and spent most of 2025 at No. 1, but the Buckeyes incredibly haven’t won a conference title since 2020 (when they won their fourth in a row). Michigan managed to get its nose in front and win three straight (2021-23), and while the Wolverines faltered in 2024, they still kept Ohio State out of the title game with a late-season upset. And in 2025, it was Indiana’s turn to surpass college football’s most consistently strong program.

Because I don’t pick against a streak, let’s say we’re looking at a sixth straight non-Buckeyes champ in 2026. Per Schlabach, the most likely title candidates are No. 1 Indiana and No. 5 Oregon, with a drop down to No. 13 USC, No. 16 Iowa, No. 18 Michigan and No. 19 Washington. Oregon should be dynamite, I’m honestly very curious about USC, and Iowa was a series of gut-wrenching close losses from a magnificent season. But we’re going to keep things simple here.

The pick: Indiana. I’m trying this new thing where I don’t underestimate Indiana, so let’s go with the Hoosiers. We don’t yet know where college football’s greatest turnaround story will end, and Curt Cignetti has already landed his next set of key veteran transfers in guys like quarterback Josh Hoover (TCU), running back Turbo Richard (Boston College) and receiver Nick Marsh (Michigan State). Let’s say for now that IU’s run continues.

SEC champion

The rule: It has to be won by either Kirby Smart (2017, 2022, 2024, 2025) or a coach who has proved he can beat Kirby Smart (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023).

This was the rule last year, and Smart’s Georgia backed it up with a third title in four seasons. With as much as college football might have changed in recent years, the Bulldogs remain the final boss in the Southeastern Conference, and it’s proved very difficult to knock them off their perch.

With Nick Saban now two seasons into retirement, there aren’t many SEC head coaches who have proved they can take down the big bad from Athens. In fact, there are only three: Ole Miss’ Pete Golding (whose Rebels won a thrilling 2025 CFP quarterfinal), Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer (who has all sorts of holes to fill in Tuscaloosa but has beaten Georgia twice in three tries) and, of course, LSU’s Lane Kiffin (whose Ole Miss team beat the Dawgs in 2024).

Texas might be No. 2 in the Way-Too-Early, but Steve Sarkisian is still trying to figure out how to clear the Georgia hurdle. The only semi-cohesive logic I can pull from his hire of defensive coordinator Will Muschamp is Muschamp’s knowledge of Georgia’s inner workings (he has spent the past five seasons fulfilling various roles in Athens); it can’t be his track record, as he hasn’t produced an elite defense as a solo coordinator since 2009. The world has changed just a bit since then. For now, the Longhorns are ineligible, and the only teams that can win the conference are therefore Way-Too-Early No. 4 Georgia, No. 9 Ole Miss, No. 15 LSU or No. 21 Bama.

The pick: Georgia. While I have quite a few questions about the Dawgs’ offensive upside in 2026, I have very few questions about a defense that shifted into a rare gear late in 2025 — CFP loss aside — and returns burgeoning stars like linebackers Chris Cole and Raylen Wilson and corner Ellis Robinson IV. Their ceiling remains high, and a Smart team will always know how to brawl. We’ll say the Dawgs win a third straight title.

Big 12 champion

The rule: Either flip the close games around … or go with the money.

I was both right and wrong about the Big 12 in last year’s CFP projections. On one hand, I nailed Utah’s turnaround — the Utes had fallen to 5-7 in 2024 because of a sharp downturn in close-game results (they lost five games by a total of 23 points), and they indeed turned that back around. The Big 12 enjoys a level of roster parity few others can match, and it’s difficult to win (or lose) all your close games two years in a row. I thought Utah would have a great year, and that’s what happened.

Another thing also happened, however: Texas Tech whipped out the proverbial checkbook and spent big to build a fantastic roster. Thanks in part to 2025 newcomers like edge rushers David Bailey and Romello Height and cornerback Brice Pollock, the Red Raiders surged to the top of the Big 12 pile, improving a little on offense and a ton on defense. And their 2026 transfer class looks awfully exciting, too — enough so that they’re No. 7 on the Way-Too-Early despite losing a lot of 2025’s best players.

In 2026, then, it’s going to be Tech versus the best of the close-game turnaround teams. And two teams stand out in that pack. Kansas State went 2-5 in one-score finishes in 2025, 1-4 in Big 12 play, and between close losses and all the new demands of modern roster management, head coach Chris Klieman retired and was replaced by up-and-comer (and former K-State quarterback) Collin Klein. His first Wildcats roster will look awfully different, with over 30 players transferring out and 25 coming in (to date), but he did hold onto hot-and-cold quarterback Avery Johnson.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma State went 0-4 in one-score finishes, 0-3 in conference play, and it turned what was destined to be a bad season into a truly awful one. The Cowboys went 1-11, sent Mike Gundy out to pasture, and brought in Eric Morris (who, in turn, brought in a lot of his recent North Texas stars).

The pick: Texas Tech. Another predictable pick. The Red Raiders are a far safer pick than either K-State or OSU, and after the level of domination they showed in 2025 (average score of Tech’s Big 12 contests: Tech 38, opponent 11) we’ll ride the hot hand. I do figure their defense takes a step backward, but the signing of quarterback Brendan Sorsby (Cincinnati), the addition of receivers like Malcolm Simmons (Auburn) and Donte Lee Jr. (Liberty) and the return of a pair of strong running backs (Cameron Dickey and J’Koby Williams) could assure that offensive improvement offsets any defensive regression.

ACC champion

The rule: It has to be won by either Clemson (2011, 2015-20, 2022, 2024) or a team that beat Clemson in the regular season (2012-14, 2021, 2023, 2025).

This was last season’s rule, and thanks to the funky tiebreakers that put Duke in the ACC championship game (which the Blue Devils won over Virginia), we get to keep it for 2026 even though Clemson’s overall place within the ACC looks awfully shaky at the moment following the Tigers’ worst season since 2010. Therefore, of the 17 teams in the ACC, only nine are eligible for the crown: Clemson, Clemson’s four 2026 home opponents (Georgia Tech, Miami, North Carolina, Virginia Tech) and Clemson’s four away opponents (Cal, Duke, Florida State, Syracuse).

The ACC has three teams ranked on the Way-Too-Early list — No. 8 Miami, No. 14 Louisville, No. 17 SMU — and only one plays Clemson. So this one’s pretty easy, huh?

The pick: Miami. The Hurricanes lose quite a few difference-makers, but with running back Mark Fletcher Jr. and receiver Malachi Toney returning and, presumably, Duke’s Darian Mensah taking over at QB (though that could get awfully messy), the defending national runners-up are still comfortably the ACC’s most proven quantity heading into 2026. The ACC is becoming pretty adept at throwing surprises our way — SMU reached the CFP in its first season in the league in 2024, and Duke’s title last year certainly defied many strands of logic — but we know who the top dog is to start.

(Of course, an alternative rule could win the day in 2026: It’s an even-numbered year, and therefore Clemson will win the league. The Tigers did so in 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024, after all. And it would be just like Dabo Swinney’s antisocial squad to do the deed a year after falling apart under huge expectations.)

Best Group of 6 champion

The rule: The best team to schedule multiple power-conference opponents wins.

Granted, the word “schedule” is important here — Boise State technically scheduled multiple power-conference opponents when it added Washington State and Oregon State to its nonconference docket (which already included Oregon) for 2024, even if the Cougars and Beavers were power-conference cast-offs by the time those games officially occurred.

I’ve pretty much given up on the committee approach for determining CFP rankings at this point. The CFP committee’s job is to craft a top 25 each week, but at this point it clearly thinks its job is to artisanly handcraft a list of playoff teams instead. Miami got into the CFP because there wasn’t a team separating the Hurricanes from Notre Dame on the list, and therefore their head-to-head win over the Irish suddenly carried triple the weight that it would have had BYU or Alabama been separating the two in the rankings; that’s madness. So is the fact that the committee so thoroughly uses the “Ain’t played nobody” rule to determine its Group of 5 representative.

It’s pretty hard for a good mid-major program to schedule power-conference opponents — those power teams are probably looking for a win, after all — and it’s going to get even trickier with the SEC and ACC (sort of) moving to nine-game conference schedules. There are now fewer total slots available, and there’s even less motivation to schedule a tough mid-major game. But the committee will still clearly favor the teams that managed to snag one of those contests.

James Madison was quite a bit better than Tulane on paper in 2025: The Dukes finished the year 27th in both SP+ and the FPI, while the Green Wave were merely 45th and 54th, respectively, and JMU had fewer regular-season losses, too. But Tulane was always going to rank ahead of JMU because the Green Wave had gone 2-1 against power-conference teams while the Dukes had gone 0-1. Granted, JMU got in anyway because of Duke’s surprise ACC title, and while neither shined in the CFP, the Dukes still showed more of a pulse against Oregon (they lost 51-34) than Tulane did against Ole Miss (41-10).

It’s clear that the edge for landing the Group of 6’s guaranteed playoff bid — and yes, it’s now the Group of 6, with the Pac-12 fleshing out its roster — will go to the teams that have managed to schedule well. By my count, 14 G6 programs have at least two power-conference opponents lined up for 2026, and perhaps not surprisingly, most of those teams were pretty bad last season.

Only five of the 14 finished .500 or better: 11-3 Tulane (2026 opponents: Duke and Kansas State), 9-4 Hawai’i (Stanford and Arizona State), 7-6 Georgia Southern (Clemson and Houston), 7-6 Washington State (Washington, Kansas State and Arizona) and 7-7 Miami-Ohio (Pittsburgh and Cincinnati). As much as I would love to make the case for a playoff push from, say, 5-7 Kent State (South Carolina and Ohio State) or 4-8 Tulsa (Oklahoma State and Arkansas), we should probably stick to semi-known quantities and give the pick to one of the five decent teams.

The pick: Hawai’i. Surprise! Picking Tulane would have been too easy — plus, I didn’t necessarily love the school’s new head coaching hire Will Hall — so let’s go with some new blood. Timmy Chang’s Rainbow Warriors both began and ended the 2025 season with wins over power-conference opponents (even if it was just Stanford and Cal), and they were awfully fun to watch. Granted, they lost star receiver Jackson Harris (LSU) and dynamite punter Billy Gowers (Indiana) to the portal, but coordinator Dennis Thurman’s defense was their better unit in 2025, and if quarterback Micah Alejado can remain healthy (he missed two games and played hurt in others), he’s a firecracker. So we’ll say Hawai’i beats Stanford and Arizona State, wins the new-look Mountain West and becomes a playoff success story.

At-large bids

We need two rules to account for the CFP’s seven at-large bids.

Rule No. 1: Six teams from the Way-Too-Early Top 25.

Exactly six of seven at-larges were accounted for in Schlabach’s list in both 2024 and 2025. (The 2025 list: Ohio State, Oregon, Alabama, Texas A&M, Miami and Ole Miss.) We’ve already handed auto-bids to a few of 2026’s top teams — No. 1 Indiana, No. 4 Georgia, No. 7 Texas Tech and No. 8 Miami — but that leaves us a pretty big list from which to choose six teams.

The picks:

Notre Dame. I was annoyed that the Fighting Irish were left out of the 2025 CFP, both because of the logic involved — see the “physical separation” conversation above — and because I thought they were good enough to win the national title. They lose some key players like everyone else, including star running backs Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price and receiver Malachi Fields, a huge difference-maker in 2025. But the defense appears loaded, quarterback CJ Carr was dynamite for much of the season and, well, Notre Dame always has good running backs.

Throw in the gross new “Notre Dame is automatically in with a top-12 ranking” rule and a much easier early-season schedule and you have maybe the single most likely CFP team of 2026.

Oregon. Like Georgia, the Ducks’ defense thrived ahead of schedule, with a pretty young core, in 2025. I was skeptical of the addition of transfer quarterback Dylan Raiola (Nebraska), but with the announced return of quarterback Dante Moore and a fabulous crop of 2025 freshmen, the Ducks should be loaded once more. No one’s a sure thing in college football now, but Dan Lanning’s team is awfully close, even if it still needs to address that “getting blown out by the eventual national champion in the CFP each year” thing.

Ohio State. OK, maybe Ohio State is a sure thing. The Buckeyes couldn’t shift their offense out of Caution Mode when it counted in 2025, and it was costly. And while Ryan Day made what turned out to be a fabulous new defensive coordinator hire in Matt Patricia a year ago, he has an equally important hire to make on offense in the coming days or weeks. But no matter what, the Buckeyes will still have receiver Jeremiah Smith catching passes from Julian Sayin, with running back Bo Jackson — who improved significantly throughout his freshman year — in the backfield. There might not be a better starting point for any roster in the sport.

Texas. I was skeptical of the Longhorns, or at least their credentials for being the preseason No. 1 team, heading into 2025, and that skepticism proved warranted, as quarterback Arch Manning — the least-proven preseason Heisman favorite ever — had lessons to learn and both an unproven receiving corps and rebuilt lines struggled at times. But even if they’re ineligible for the SEC title because of the Kirby Smart rule, it’s hard not to acknowledge that (A) Manning was No. 1 in Total QBR from Nov. 1 onward and (B) Texas still won 10 games and went 3-2 against the final SP+ top 15. Even with Sarkisian taking a huge reach with his defensive coordinator hire, this is a more proven team heading into 2026.

Texas A&M. Just as I was skeptical of Texas, I was higher than most on Texas A&M, so let’s ride that for another season. Mike Elko’s Aggies fell apart offensively late in the year, which turned an 11-0 start into an 0-2 finish, and they’ll have to replace star pass rusher Cashius Howell. But the return of veteran quarterback Marcel Reed and underrated star receiver Mario Craver, along with a portal-fortified offensive line and plenty of stellar defensive options, should assure a pretty high level of play again in College Station. The SEC isn’t loaded with sure things heading into 2026, but A&M has plenty to offer.

USC. Heading into 2025, it appeared that, receiver Makai Lemon aside, most of USC’s best players would be scheduled to return in 2026. “Steel yourself for some serious USC hype this time next year, I guess,” I wrote in last summer’s Big Ten preview. The loss of Lemon and defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn perhaps alleviated some of that potential hype, as did the fact that they underachieved late in 2025 and missed out on a 10-win season.

But Lincoln Riley signed ESPN’s No. 1 2026 recruiting class to add to a roster that returns quarterback Jayden Maiava, two strong running backs and a wonderfully experienced offensive line. There are always justifiable questions about Riley’s defense, and the conference schedule features Indiana, Ohio State, Oregon, Washington and Penn State, so if you want to remain a USC skeptic, it’s warranted. But life’s about taking risks, right? Fight on.

Rule No. 2: A team that had a losing record last season.

We have to save room for some nonsense. The 2024 CFP featured an Indiana team that had gone 3-9 the season before. The 2025 CFP featured Oklahoma, which had managed just a 6-7 record in its first SEC campaign. Virginia also nearly made it after three straight losing seasons.

Granted, I threw a North Carolina Hail Mary in last year’s CFP projections, and that came up just a wee bit short, but someone weird will probably thrive, and there aren’t many obvious candidates. What’s your flavor: Florida (4-8 in 2025), Auburn (5-7) or South Carolina (4-8) from the SEC? Wisconsin (4-8) or, I don’t know, Maryland (4-8) from the Big Ten? Florida State (5-7) or Virginia Tech (3-9) from the ACC? Baylor (5-7) or Kansas (5-7) from the Big 12?

None of the above. If we’re getting weird, let’s get really weird.

The pick: Oklahoma State. Hear me out! Were the Cowboys abjectly hopeless in 2025? Absolutely. They plummeted to 1-11 with what was, per SP+, their worst team since 1963 (and they had some awfully bad teams in the 1990s). But they made a potentially dynamite hire in Eric Morris — one of my favorite hires of the cycle — and he has basically imported his dynamite North Texas offense, bringing in 17 former Mean Green players including stars in QB Drew Mestemaker, RB Caleb Hawkins and WR Wyatt Young. OSU will score plenty of points in 2026, and if the Cowboys’ close-games luck flips as well, they could be a huge turnaround story.

Huge enough to make the CFP? Almost certainly not. But I’m going to connect on one of these outlandish picks at some point, and I’m going to be so insufferable about it when that happens.

The CFP for the 2026 season

So we have our CFP field for 2026. Aiming for the most aesthetically pleasing pairings possible, we’ll say the seedings line up like this:

1. Indiana

2. Georgia

3. Texas Tech

4. Notre Dame

5. USC

6. Texas A&M

7. Ohio State

8. Miami

9. Oregon

10. Texas

11. Oklahoma State

12. Hawai’i

First-round matchups

9 Oregon at 8 Miami (winner plays 1 Indiana). The Mario Cristobowl, with a built-in 2025 CFP rematch in the quarterfinals.

12 Hawai’i at 5 USC (winner plays 4 Notre Dame). Micah Alejado vs. Jayden Maiava is quite the tantalizing matchup, and this way we maybe still force the college football universe to give us a USC-Notre Dame game.

11 Oklahoma State at 6 Texas A&M (winner plays 3 Texas Tech). The New and Old Big 12 portion of the draw.

10 Texas at 7 Ohio State (winner plays 2 Georgia). We get yet another Texas-Ohio State game (to go with the 2024 semifinals and 2025-26 home-and-home series), plus either another Sark vs. Smart game or a rematch of the fabulous 2022 Georgia-OSU semifinal in the quarters.

Predictions

• First round: Oregon over Miami, USC over Hawaii, A&M over Oklahoma State and Texas over Ohio State.

• Quarterfinals: Oregon over Indiana (revenge!), Notre Dame over USC, Texas Tech over Texas A&M, Georgia over Texas.

• Semifinals: Notre Dame over Oregon, Georgia over Texas Tech.

• Finals: Notre Dame over Georgia.

I never know which teams I think the highest of until I force myself to make some predictions. Apparently 2026 is Notre Dame’s year. You heard it here first. The Irish appear loaded on paper, and whoever beats Oregon in the CFP has to win the whole thing. It’s the rule at this point.

Originally published at ESPN