College Football 2026: Seven Storylines That Will Define the New Season
- Gareth Evans
- 11 hours ago
- 7 min read
Seven months after the Indiana Hoosiers stunned college football by claiming the national championship in Miami, a new season is about to unfold and with it, the optimism only the run up to the first week can bring. Indiana, led by their charismatic coach Curt Cignetti, he of the "It's pretty simple. I win. Google me." quote, showed that anyone can rise, not only to the giddy heights of the College Football Playoff, but to the summit itself.
If Indiana could become the best team in college football from odds of 100-1 in a season, will it be harder for them to retain their title or is there hope for others to follow a similar path?
Indiana's win challenged annual assumptions about recruiting class rankings, how rosters are built, which programs can be anointed by the sports media as potential contenders and which programs are barely thought of. The off season has seen teams try and figure out how they can close the gap. Here are some of the key story lines:
Can Indiana repeat?
Don't count against it. Curt Cignetti's team thrives on upsetting the consensus opinion, which is that the Hoosiers will reach another College Football Playoff, but come up short.
Indiana has to replace the reigning Heisman Trophy winner and No.1 overall NFL draft pick Fernando Mendoza at quarterback, in addition to several high draft picks.
There is continuity. Cignetti welcomes back all his coaching staff, 11 starters from last season with an additional 17 arriving via the transfer portal. The most prominent arrival is TCU quarterback transfer Josh Hoover, an experienced and productive passer with over 9,500 yards and 71 touchdown passes on his resume, who will run the offense.
Repeating as champion would be an extraordinary achievement. Positioning themselves as a perennial contender, in the Big Ten and the end of season playoff, would be confirmation of their transformation. A mediocre season would threaten to label Indiana's remarkable 2026 championship as a one-off Cinderella story.
Are Miami poised to go one better?
"The U" announced their return to college football prominence with a compelling playoff run that saw the Hurricanes knock off Texas A&M, defending champion Ohio State and a dangerous Ole Miss team before succumbing to Indiana in a gripping final.
Head coach Mario Cristobal will not be content with a runner-up spot as the pinnacle of the transformation of his alma mater's football program. Miami has reloaded impressively since January, landing two of the transfer portal's best prospects in Duke quarterback transfer Darius Mensah and Missouri pass rusher Damon Wilson II.
Mensah threw for 34 touchdowns and just six interceptions for the Blue Devils, half the number of NFL-bound Carson Beck, the high-profile Georgia transfer, who led Miami last year. He brings Duke's top receiver Cooper Barkate who will line up opposite Malachi Toney, who caught 10 touchdowns and had 1,211 receiving yards in a sensational freshman year. Running back Mark Fletcher's game elevated in the playoff. He ran for 509 of his 1,192 rushing yards in just four playoff games.
Five starters return to a Miami defense that could provide the platform for the Hurricanes' offense to dominate games and go that elusive step further to a national championship.
Lane Kiffin must win at LSU, did he leave Ole Miss too early?
Having led an impressive rebuild over the previous three seasons, the former Ole Miss coach left a rapidly improving Rebels team on an exciting post season run for the bright lights of Death Valley stadium and riches on offer in Baton Rouge.
Kiffin walked away from an 11-1 team who has posted their best regular season in school history, and subsequently made it to the CFP semi-final under the charge of his former defensive coordinator Pete Golding.
LSU's new coach faces huge expectations. Kiffin will need to deliver a playoff run and SEC contention quickly to quieten any disgruntled murmurs. He delivered in the transfer portal, landing the nation's best portal quarterback in Arizona State's Sam Leavitt and brought in edge rushers Princewill Umanmielen and Jordan Ross from Ole Miss and Tennessee respectively.
Ole Miss sees the explosive Trinidad Chambliss return at quarterback to line up next to back Kewan Lacy, who racked up 1,567 rushing yards and school record 24 touchdowns. A number of last season's successful team return and give Ole Miss, despite some high profile departures, a better team on paper than last year.
It will be fascinating to see whether Kiffin's new team, or the one he walked away from, has the better record in 2026. Kiffin's LSU travel to Oxford to take on his old team, now led by his former defensive coordinator Pete Golding in a must-see match up.
The coaching carousel continued
While Lane Kiffin's move to LSU was arguably the headline of the coaching moves, more than 30 FBS programs will start the new college football season with new head coaches.
Penn State almost became Iowa State East, landing former Cyclones coach Matt Campbell to refresh a program that, having failed to break the Ohio State-Michigan doninance in the Big Ten, saw Indiana overtake them in two seasons. Campbell is joined by 20 of his Iowa Stat players, including the talented quarterback Rocco Becht.
James Frankin, fired by Penn State, takes the reigns at Virgina Tech, and will look to restore the Hokies as a contender in the ACC. Florida ended the Billy Napier reign, replacing the former Louisiana coach with Tulane's Jon Sumrall. Napier has since taken the reigns at James Madison University.
After leading James Madison to the College Football Playoff for the first time, Bob Chesney departed to oversee a sleeping giant at UCLA. He has this week hired former NFL quarterback Derek Carr as special advisor.
Michigan hired the experienced former Utah coach Kyle Whittingham in one of the off seasons's more intriguing moves while in-state rival Michigan State is tasking ex-Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald to rebuild the Spartans.
Kentucky, Auburn and Arkansas added Will Stein, Alex Golesh and Ryan Silverfield to their head coaching positions.
Who will be the face of the 2026 college football season?
It's all about the quarterback in 2026, with eight or nine established passers jostling for position in the Heisman race and also to secure high positions in a loaded 2027 NFL draft class. That said, the best player in college football lines up at wide receiver. Ohio State's Jeremiah Smith is a 6'3", 223lb beast who has 2,558 receiving yards and 27 touchdowns from 163 receptions in two dazzling years of college football. Miami sensation Malachi Toney and Cam Coleman, the Auburn transfer who has landed in Texas will also be players to watch.
At quarterback, Arch Manning is possibly the most recognised name in college football. He needs a full year to build on a promising second half to last season and convert his heralded potential into national championship level consistency.
Dante Moore's return to Oregon makes the Ducks a favourite to contend again and Ohio State's Julian Sayin boasts a 77% pass completion rate, the third highest in FBS history. And he'll be throwing again to Jeremiah Smith.
CJ Carr and Trinidad Chambliss return to Notre Dame and Ole Miss with points to prove, Josh Hoover at Indiana and Darian Mensah at Miami take the reins at last season's championship finalists, while Marcel Reed and Gunner Stockton will need to restore confidence in the Texas A&M and Georgia programs after earlier than expected ends to their team's seasons.
A note on Brendan Sorsby, a notable transfer from Cincinnati to Texas Tech, and mooted as a potential first-round pick in next year's NFL draft. Sorsby became subject to a NCAA gambling investigation, sought treatment for gambling addiction and litigation over his eligibility to play college football. He decided to leave the Red Raiders and apply for the NFL supplemental draft, which was subsequently cancelled due to the complexity of Sorsby's application. He is now preparing for the 2027 NFL draft.
Big Ten vs. SEC
Long considered as the best conference in college football, the SEC's dominance has been dented by three consecutive national championship wins by Big Ten teams Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana. Ohio State and Indiana will be amongst the favourites to lift the College Football Playoff trophy again. While Michigan rebuild, they sit in a second tier of contenders alongside USC and Penn State. Oregon, with a 26-3 record and powered by Nike's millions of dollars, will feature heavily in the argument for the preseason No.1.
The shift in bragging rights does not just lie with a debate on Big Ten vs. SEC, but also within the SEC itself. In recent years, Alabama and Georgia have led the SEC's playoff domination. Recently, the admission of Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12 has intensified competition. Oklahoma boasts one of the best defenses in college football and their Red River rival Texas has appeared in two of the last three playoffs. Texas A&M, LSU and Ole Miss are well coached and will challenge in a conference now featuring a nine-game league schedule, making it arguably harder to climb the all-important College Football Playoff rankings.
Does the Big Ten now sit as the best conference, or has it simply produced the last three best playoff teams? Does the SEC in fact have a deeper talent pool? We will find out in December when the final rankings are unveiled.
Welcome back, Pac-12.
July 1st saw the welcome return of Pac-12 to the college football fold. Traditionally a powerhouse conference of college football, when you hark back to the great USC teams of Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush, Chip Kelly's Oregon teams of 2010 and 2012, the early Nineties Washington Huskies and late nineties UCLA Bruins (with an honourable mention for Andrew Luck's Stanford).
The new conference launches as arguably the strongest conference beneath the Power Four of Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12. Now containing eight teams, all bizarrely with "State" in their name, making the conference more a Pac-8 State. The new members:
Boise State
Colorado State
Fresno State
Oregon State
San Diego State
Texas State
Utah State
Washington State
Gonzaga has also joined, but not for football. The reborn Pac-12 offers some ambitious programs an opportunity to compete and rekindles West Coast college football as a competitive entity. It will be fascinating to see how this conference develops in terms of identity, fan and media appeal in the coming seasons.
Looking ahead
Indiana’s unlikely triumph showed that college football’s established order can be usurped, but defending the crown may prove even harder than winning it. Michigan and Ohio State have failed, and match Alabama and Georgia's ability to do so. From Miami’s response, Lane Kiffin’s LSU gamble, to the Big Ten-SEC rivalry and rebirth of the Pac-12, the 2026 season arrives with established programs under pressure and ambitious challengers ready to disrupt once again.
Comments