The Crystal Ball Has Never Been This Chaotic
College football has always been a sport that rewards the delusional. The fan bases that believe too hard, the coaches who sell visions they haven't built yet, and the 17-year-old quarterbacks who pick schools based on vibes and NIL deals that would make a hedge fund manager blush. But heading into the 2026 season, the chaos feels different. It feels earned.
Indiana -- Indiana -- just won a national championship. Sherrone Moore got arrested after getting fired from Michigan. Kyle Whittingham, a 66-year-old defensive mastermind from Salt Lake City, is now coaching the winningest program in college football history. And somewhere in Columbus, Jeremiah Smith is looking at Heisman odds boards wondering why quarterbacks keep getting all the love.
So yeah, the prediction game feels a little more unhinged than usual. Good. That is exactly where we want to be. Here are seven bold calls for what the 2026 college football season has in store.
1. Jeremiah Smith Wins the 2026 Heisman Trophy
Let's start with the one that feels inevitable but historically improbable. Wide receivers winning the Heisman Trophy is about as common as a punt return in a Big Ten championship game. DeVonta Smith pulled it off in 2020, but before him you have to rewind to Desmond Howard in 1991. That's the entire list.
Jeremiah Smith is built different, though. His two-year stat line at Ohio State -- 163 receptions, 2,558 yards, 27 touchdowns -- reads like a created player in a video game where you turned the sliders all the way up. He was the No. 1 recruit in the country coming out of high school, won a national title as a true freshman, and followed that up with a unanimous All-American sophomore season where he posted 87 catches for 1,243 yards and 12 scores despite Ohio State's offense sputtering at times under first-year starter Julian Sayin.
The case for Smith is straightforward: Ohio State enters 2026 as the consensus title favorite at +550, Sayin returns as a Heisman finalist himself, five-star freshman Chris Henry Jr. arrives to stretch defenses even further, and Smith has already proven he performs at his peak on the biggest stages. His "3rd and Jeremiah" catch in the 2024 national title game against Notre Dame -- a 56-yard reception on third-and-11 that sealed the win -- remains the single most iconic play of the expanded playoff era.
The advanced numbers back him up too. Smith dropped just two passes on 109 targets in 2025, a concentration rate that would make NFL scouts weep. He is currently +1200 on most sportsbooks, making him the best non-quarterback bet on the board. If Ohio State runs through their loaded schedule and contends for another title, Smith's highlight reel will be impossible for voters to ignore.
2. Arch Manning Becomes a Heisman Finalist and Leads Texas Back to the CFP
The Manning heir's first full season as a starter was messy, fascinating, and ultimately encouraging. Texas went 10-3, with Manning throwing for 2,942 yards, 24 touchdowns, and seven interceptions while completing 61.4% of his passes. His QBR of 70.5 ranked 34th nationally, which is not exactly the stuff of family dynasty legend.
But here is the thing about Manning's 2025: the narrative arc mattered more than the stat line. After opening with a 14-7 loss to Ohio State and a 29-21 road defeat at Florida that prompted The New York Times to label him college football's first "flop," Manning responded with a stretch of play that silenced every doubter in the room. His performance in a 23-6 Red River Rivalry victory over Oklahoma -- 21-of-27, surgical, emotionally composed -- was the moment he stopped being Cooper Manning's kid and started being Texas's quarterback.
The 2026 version of Manning should scare the entire SEC. He has a full year of starts under his belt, Steve Sarkisian's offense will be tailored more aggressively to his skill set, and the schedule offers more runway before the gauntlet hits. Manning entered 2025 as the preseason Heisman favorite at +600 odds and never got close to living up to those numbers. But the development was real, the tools are absurd, and Year Two starters in Sark's system historically take a massive jump. If Texas gets to 11 wins and Manning's touchdown-to-interception ratio improves -- both entirely plausible -- he will be on the stage in New York.
3. Oklahoma and USC Meet in the College Football Playoff
This is the Lincoln Riley Bowl, and the college football universe needs it to happen. Riley left Oklahoma for USC after the 2021 season in one of the most dramatic coaching moves in the sport's history, and the two programs have been circling each other in the broader narrative ever since. Now they are both playoff-caliber teams in different conferences, which means the only way they meet is in the postseason.
Oklahoma went 10-3 in 2025 under Brent Venables, earning the No. 8 seed in the CFP before falling to Alabama 34-24 in the first round. The defense was elite, allowing just 15.5 points per game (seventh nationally), and the offense showed signs of life under coordinator Ben Arbuckle. The Sooners are 0-5 all time in playoff games, which is a staggering drought for a program of their pedigree, but the roster talent is trending sharply upward.
USC went 9-4 in Riley's fourth season, finishing 7-2 in Big Ten play and earning a No. 20 final ranking. Quarterback Jayden Maiava threw for 3,711 yards and 30 total touchdowns, wide receiver Makai Lemon won the Biletnikoff Award, and the offensive infrastructure is the best Riley has built since his Oklahoma days. But the defense and Riley's inability to close out ranked opponents remain concerns. His overall USC record of 35-18 is not bad, but it is also not the elite tier he promised when he arrived.
For this prediction to hit, both teams need to clear their respective gauntlets: OU navigates the SEC with a defense-first identity, and USC finally breaks through in a Big Ten that features Ohio State, Oregon, Indiana, and Penn State. If they each earn at-large bids, the bracket could produce the most narratively satisfying matchup in playoff history. Imagine the split-screen shots of Riley in cardinal and gold staring down his old program. Television executives would collapse.
4. Notre Dame Returns to the CFP as a 12-Seed
The Irish spent December 2025 in full tantrum mode, and honestly, it was kind of embarrassing. After going 10-2 in the regular season and earning a No. 11 ranking, Notre Dame got bumped from the final 12-team playoff field when the committee chose Miami over them based largely on a head-to-head result. The Irish response was to withdraw from the Pop-Tarts Bowl entirely, releasing a statement that read like a passive-aggressive text from someone who just got broken up with: "We appreciate all the support from our families and fans, and we're hoping to bring the 12th national title to South Bend in 2026."
Marcus Freeman's program has real talent returning. CJ Carr threw for 2,741 yards, 24 touchdowns, and six interceptions as a first-year starter, earning rave reviews in spring practice. The running back room needs reshuffling after Jeremiyah Love's departure, but the defensive front should be one of the best in the country. Notre Dame enters 2026 as a consensus preseason top-five team, with Carr's Heisman odds sitting at +750, the best on most boards.
The 12-seed call is the spicy part. Notre Dame's independent status means no conference championship game as a safety net, and their schedule is built to produce two or three losses against ranked opponents. A two-loss Notre Dame team that plays a rigorous schedule could easily slide to the back of the bracket, which would mean opening the playoff on the road. For a program still stinging from last year's snub, the hunger factor is real. These Irish are going to play with a very specific kind of anger.
5. Ohio State Wins Its First Big Ten Title Since 2020
The Buckeyes have not won a Big Ten championship since the abbreviated 2020 season, which feels impossible to type given the talent pipeline Ryan Day has maintained. They lost the 2025 title game to Indiana 13-10 in one of the most frustrating offensive performances in recent program history -- reaching the red zone four times without scoring, missing a 27-yard field goal that would have tied it, and failing to score a single point after halftime.
That loss, combined with a Cotton Bowl exit against Miami in the CFP quarterfinals (24-14), means Ohio State's 2025 ended with a thud despite a 12-0 regular season. The talent deficit was never the issue. Execution in the biggest moments was.
In 2026, the ingredients are all there for a correction. Sayin returns as a polished third-year starter. Smith is the best skill player in the sport. The defensive line reloads as it always does. And the schedule, while brutal -- Texas, Oregon, Michigan, Indiana, and USC all appear -- gives Ohio State the resume-building opportunities to lock up a top seed if they handle business. The Big Ten title drought ends this year because the margin between Ohio State and the rest of the conference is wider than it looks, and the Indiana team that beat them lost its Heisman-winning quarterback and head coach Josh Hoover and Curt Cignetti's magic will be hard to replicate at the same level.
6. New Head Coach Kyle Whittingham Leads Michigan to the CFP
This is the prediction that sounds crazy until you actually think about it for more than ten seconds. Michigan hired Whittingham on a five-year, $41 million deal after Sherrone Moore's firing-and-arrest saga left the program in chaos. Whittingham went 177-88 in 21 seasons at Utah, building the Utes from a mid-major afterthought into a two-time Pac-12 champion. He is a defensive architect who develops NFL talent at an absurd clip -- 128 players sent to the league during his time on Utah's staff -- and he thrives at imposing a physical, disciplined identity on his teams.
That identity is exactly what Michigan needs right now. The Wolverines still have Bryce Underwood, the No. 1 overall recruit from the 2025 class, developing at quarterback. Moore's back-to-back top-11 recruiting classes left the roster stocked with talent. The brand still recruits itself to a degree. And Whittingham's presence brings something Michigan has desperately lacked since Jim Harbaugh left: adult supervision.
The 12-team playoff format is the key enabler here. Michigan does not need to win the Big Ten. They need to go 10-2 or better, pick up a couple quality wins, and let the brand equity do the rest. Whittingham's Utah teams consistently outperformed their recruiting rankings, and now he has the resources of the winningest program in FBS history. An eight- or nine-win floor feels safe. A playoff ceiling is not unreasonable.
The Season Ahead
College football in 2026 sits at an inflection point. The sport's competitive landscape has been reshaped by the transfer portal, NIL economics, and a 12-team playoff that rewards both blue bloods and upstarts in ways the old system never could. Indiana winning the national title proved that the establishment can be toppled. Ohio State losing to the Hoosiers in the Big Ten Championship proved that no amount of five-star talent guarantees anything on a given Saturday night.
The seven predictions above are not safe bets. They are not supposed to be. Bold predictions are supposed to make you uncomfortable, to force you to look at the evidence and decide whether the world you think exists actually matches the one being built in front of you. Jeremiah Smith is the best player in college football and deserves the Heisman conversation quarterbacks have monopolized. Arch Manning's growth arc is going to produce a breakout season. Kyle Whittingham is going to make Michigan competitive faster than anyone expects.
And somewhere in Los Angeles, Lincoln Riley is going to check his phone on selection Sunday, see Oklahoma's name on the same bracket as his, and feel something in the pit of his stomach he has not felt since he drove away from Norman.
September cannot get here fast enough.
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