2026 College Football General Discussion

[LouisEly]

Iowa and Minnesota 3-3 at half.  Both teams looking that bad.

[Joseph Zarr]

4 minutes ago, LouisEly said:

Iowa and Minnesota 3-3 at half.  Both teams looking that bad.

[LouisEly]

Washington scores two TDs in the last two minutes at Nebraska to win 17-7.  

[wildcat83]

I feel like the college playoff ranking committee was drunk!

[LouisEly]

UCLA's "backup" QB Ty Dieffenbach, who was 22-33 for 264 yards against Wisconsin, has 8 completions midway through the 4th quarter against Minnesota.

For 303 yards.

His last three completions have gone for a total of 177 yards and 3 TDs.

[Jim French Stepstool]

On 11/3/2026 at 6:46 PM, wildcat83 said:

I feel like the college playoff ranking committee was drunk!

Welcome to NIL-portal era. Parity among a lot of the top I dunno, 30-40 teams.

Makes me hold my nose, but I guess Pete Rozelle would be proud.

[LouisEly]

Ohio State finding out how hard life can be when your starting QB is out.

[TwinsBrewersWorldSeries]

Miami Is not good at football.  I get they are undefeated, but they (prior to tonight) have not played a single ranked team.

if they lose tonight (ND leading 24-3), they won’t have any wins against ranked teams.

On the metrics (I know politics is different),  not sure this should be a playoff team 

[Recovering Chicagoan]

1 hour ago, TwinsBrewersWorldSeries said:

Miami Is not good at football.  I get they are undefeated, but they (prior to tonight) have not played a single ranked team.

if they lose tonight (ND leading 24-3), they won’t have any wins against ranked teams.

On the metrics (I know politics is different),  not sure this should be a playoff team 

Miami is overrated for sure. That said, if Toney weren’t injured, there’s a decent chance they would have won tonight.

[TwinsBrewersWorldSeries]

9 hours ago, Recovering Chicagoan said:

Miami is overrated for sure. That said, if Toney weren’t injured, there’s a decent chance they would have won tonight.

Fair point… but the fact remains that they have zero quality wins.   They more or less have Boise State’s resume this year.

I think my Top 6 at the moment would be:

1) Utah
2) UCLA
3) Notre Dame
4) Georgia
5) Indiana
6) BYU

I think Miami is a 7-8 win team playing in the  Big Ten

 

[nate82]

Playoffs will expand to 24 teams next year.  
 

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7765656/2026/11/09/college-football-playoff-24-teams-espn-expansion/?unlocked_article_code=1.PFE.06-m.RWEDt4LBa5jn&source=user_shared_article&smid=ta-ios-share

[JosephC]

Big-wig TV execs get what they want.  Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State....lose four games, no problem you are in.  Considering we will likely get 4 ACC teams, 3 Big 12 teams, Notre Dame and 1 "smaller conference" team, that means the SEC and Big 10 can (on average) go 7-8 teams deep.  Imagine this year's Wisconsin and Missouri teams having a chance to play for a national championship.  College football even more of a joke.

[CheezWizHed]

On 11/9/2026 at 10:50 AM, JosephC said:

Big-wig TV execs get what they want.  Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State....lose four games, no problem you are in.  Considering we will likely get 4 ACC teams, 3 Big 12 teams, Notre Dame and 1 "smaller conference" team, that means the SEC and Big 10 can (on average) go 7-8 teams deep.  Imagine this year's Wisconsin and Missouri teams having a chance to play for a national championship.  College football even more of a joke.

I'm kind of torn... things at the end of the year could get really wonky and we could have some crazy playoff shake-ups.  Power teams with lots of NFL prospects could suddenly be a worse team than a solid #12 ranked team (with fewer NFL prospects sitting out the playoffs)... 

It could be amusing... or it could just be really ugly football. 

[ErnieRilesBrianGiles]

Yeah, I don't watch much college football (other than the Badgers), but I do follow the top 25 scoreboard, and see who's up and down, mostly so I know the "must see" games in December/January. I do the same for college hoops, mostly to prep myself for March Madness.

With a 24 team tournament, I can see myself being more interested in the games than I would if they were just "bowl games." My kids love filling out brackets, regardless of the sport. I could see our family getting into a college football bracket over the holidays.

And who knows? If high school recruits know, "All I need to do is play for any top 24 team, and I'll get good exposure for the NFL draft, and a chance for greatness", maybe that will even out the NIL craziness, and keep them staying with their college team for more than a year.

What can I say...I'm an optimist.

[tmwiese55]

Yes I guess it would apply to someone like you who is more of a casual fan and only interested in the bag games at the end.  But for everyone else, it just nuked the regular season which is what has made CFB special. Also killed caring at all about conference championships. They've basically killed everything that made this the best sport.  Destroyed regional conferences, transferring all over killing any kind of team building and getting to know the team for fans. And now destroyed the regular season and along with it the bowl system although that was already started due to the transferring every year.

I think I even saw that ESPN was against this, so even the 2nd biggest financial profiter off it said "nah this is too much".  I think I saw they did fan polling of some kind too and over 90% were against it and they still went forward with it to line their pockets.  Short term greedy moves that will end up costing them in the end by screwing their customers (basically like how all major corps these days operate).

[wildcat83]

NIL and Mega Conferences hurt college football to me.  You’re watching a new team every year that you don’t know half the players until week 5, and don’t even play every team in your conference.  
 

The most recent changes seem like a positive move to me.  The 5 year limit adds clarity instead of having 7th year seniors.  The 24 team field is a great move in my opinion.  The regular season still matters with byes and home games.  Top 8 is a huge advantage and teams will fight for those byes.  Teams 9-16 playing at home is a huge deal too, and earning those seeds is huge for your university.  The Badgers might make a 12 team playoff once every 10 years?  They have a legitimate shot at this every year, and if they got up to even a 16 seed and a winnable home playoff game that would be a crazy atmosphere in Madison.  Bowl games are completely pointless, the less there are the better, this system creates more meaningful post season games.  
 

Now limit kids to 1 transfer unless there’s a coaching change! 

[owbc]

On 11/11/2026 at 11:42 AM, tmwiese55 said:

Yes I guess it would apply to someone like you who is more of a casual fan and only interested in the bag games at the end.  But for everyone else, it just nuked the regular season which is what has made CFB special. Also killed caring at all about conference championships. They've basically killed everything that made this the best sport.  Destroyed regional conferences, transferring all over killing any kind of team building and getting to know the team for fans. And now destroyed the regular season and along with it the bowl system although that was already started due to the transferring every year.

I think I even saw that ESPN was against this, so even the 2nd biggest financial profiter off it said "nah this is too much".  I think I saw they did fan polling of some kind too and over 90% were against it and they still went forward with it to line their pockets.  Short term greedy moves that will end up costing them in the end by screwing their customers (basically like how all major corps these days operate).

Another casual here, I agree. Regular season was already horribly biased by subjective rankings. Top teams have been manipulating their schedule for as long as I can remember, never playing true road games in hostile environments and certainly not in bad weather. Conferences have already been ruined by expansion. Plus the pointless conference championship games. 

New format is a tournament around the holidays at the exact time that I'm interested in watching, not in Sept/Oct when the weather is still nice and baseball is still going on. The rest of the bowl games are fine as novelties, nobody has cared about the outcome of them for decades. Nothing of value is lost if bowls outside of the playoffs go away entirely. 

So for me, the end-of-season tournament feels like a wash -- has a few upsides and downsides but overall moves the meaningful games to a time of the year when I'm more likely to care and means that Wisconsin won't be eliminated by early October. 

If they want to fix something that would truly move the needle, go back to regional conferences. Hopefully consolidation continues to the point that we just have a single mega-conference that becomes an independent body from the universities, the rest of college athletics, etc -- that is a true second league that can compete with the NFL and perhaps even become the dominant league. At that point it will finally make sense to go back to a regional schedule, especially since it won't matter if the schedule is highly imbalanced if you have a million teams in the playoffs. Once it's all consolidated you can throw all the NIL in a big pool and have proper revenue sharing, a strong governing body setting consistent rules, and other things that civilized sports have. 

So I say bring it on. 
 

[tmwiese55]

Yea a change that has to happen is to basically put all the P4 teams into one 'league' separate from the rest of CFB, presumably with its own rules on pay, transferring, etc.  And then once that is done they need to make regional divisions like in pro sports.   At least it fixes one thing that they ruined.     But basically they've ruined everything about what traditionally made it great and have just turned it into a pro league but with worse players.  The quirks of it is what it made special.   Having conference championships matter is one of the things that made it special, they've nuked it for 'ringz' only bs.

A lot of the negs apply to CBB too.  But if you think about CBB even before all the changes the last 5 years, by having nothing matter besides a one game playoff at the end. Almost noone paid attention to it other than for 3 weeks in march.  They've now decided to do the same thing with football to ruin the regular season and have it all come down to 4 weeks at the end.     For a baseball board, I think at least many on here would have some appreciation for having a regular season that matters.   

But at least you both said you're more just casuals, that's what they're targeting with this rather than diehards like me. and like you said, there's positives to it but of course the main thing was its a pure moneygrab right now.  I think they're risking the health/strength of it all in the long term and that it could all blow up in their face 10 years down the line. The hardcorers were the foundation of gamedays/pagaentry/etc and all thats gone now, so will this culture carry on for the next generation that they've ended it all.  Can't think of the right idiom, maybe cake and eat it too would be the best one I think of.

[wildcat83]

14 hours ago, tmwiese55 said:

A lot of the negs apply to CBB too.  But if you think about CBB even before all the changes the last 5 years, by having nothing matter besides a one game playoff at the end. Almost noone paid attention to it other than for 3 weeks in march.  They've now decided to do the same thing with football to ruin the regular season and have it all come down to 4 weeks at the end.     For a baseball board, I think at least many on here would have some appreciation for having a regular season that matters.   

I don't think this makes the regular season diminished.  Teams are going to fight for a bye week in football playoffs, or the chance to host a home playoff game.  I think there's a chance that it actually saves some big name matchups during the regular season.  With a small playoff field scheduling tough non-con matchups ran a pretty big risk.  Hopefully teams become more likely to schedule big matchups knowing that a loss isn't going to eliminate them from the playoffs.  I also think the last few weeks of the season will have good talk show material debating the cut lines of 8/9 and 16/17 along with the cutoff at 24.  

The biggest win out of this is home playoff games expanding for college football.  Those games are going to produce crazy atmospheres.  There are going to be 16 opportunities for schools to host and bring those events to their cities.

 

The one point that it does hurt, and I've already seen coaches talking about it, is the relevance of a conference championship.  I think it was Missouri's coach that basically said flying all over the country to play "conference" games doesn't make much sense anymore.  I'm not sure how the mega conferences even crown a champ.  There are so many teams they are almost assured to have ties at the top, and will probably have to just crown the highest ranked team the champ.

[tmwiese55]

That's the argument but it just doesn't' work out that way in reality. And since it shifts the 'matter point' down to lower ranked teams it drops off the radar to fans and fans end up with meh attitude and not caring who gets in at the bottom (not unlike CBB, people don't really care about teams 62-68). For example, just like in CBB, since everyone makes it anyway did you pay attention at all to MSU/Duke and KU/UK type games that happened this week since it changes their seed a bit?      Did say, OSU vs IU last year at the end of the year have near the weight it would've it had been win and in type game rather than both in no matter what.   That's not say the team itself won't value that bye or home field, but fans (just like you guys said as casuals) won't care until the playoffs start anyway now. It now validates everyone having that attitude of "i'll worry about it when it gets to the playoffs" so who cares about TX vs OSU in week 2 or whatever.  

And everyone says that at each expansion of 'now they''ll play tougher non conf games' but in reality the opposite has happened each step because now its easier to just get in if you don't lose more so why risk it. That's been the commentary the last few years of why would you bother playing these OSU/TX type games early in the year when it could cost you the playoffs later (which I think it did to TX last year, don't recall for sure).  Whereas, with fewer teams you need to play games like that and win them in order differentiate yourself from the other 1 or 2 loss team and get in over them. Now its, just don't lose and you're in so why play.  Right after this was announced, Florida cancelled their upcoming games vs Notre Dame.   Which gives another example, why would ND ever make their schedule tougher when they're in every year if they don't lose more than twice.  Why put a ND vs Bama type game on the schedule and risk that. And if you're in the major conferences you already have your 2-3 'good' opponents that you could lose to, so why would add another risk.