It Has Never Been Harder To Win In College Football Than In 2026

I got news for you, and it ain’t just that USC gotta Boobie Feaster — eatin’. Or that the Big Ten got two turbos at running back (Richard at Indiana; Rogers at Ohio State) and you ain’t even heard the lag hit. Or that UCLA got receiver Major Pride, or that Ampersand U, also known as Texas A&M, got running back Tiger Riden Jr. And the doggone circus ain’t even in town. Here it is: You’re about to watch the most competitive season of college football ever. It has never been harder to win than it is in 2026. “I agree with you,” UCLA coach Bob Chesney told me. “I think that probably a lot of it stems from the fact that every year it’s a new team as well, right? There’s a lot of new guys on a lot of teams across the country every single year. Some made their team better. Some didn’t. “Ultimately, for me, the margins are thin, and that’s what you’re pointing toward. It’s not easy to be in a position where you just walk out and expect to win a football game. Doesn’t really happen anymore in my mind.” At Big Ten media days last month, I pointedly asked Chesney about how difficult it is to win a college football game as someone who’s coached at almost every level the NCAA offers. From Division III Salve Regina, to Division II Assumption, to FCS Holy Cross, to Group of Six James Madison, to, now, Big Ten UCLA. He’s also won at every one of those levels, and led the Dukes to their first-ever College Football Playoff appearance before USC, Wisconsin or Florida — to name three — could (or ever) do the same. There’s never been a fiercer fight for players, to win recruiting battles, to raise money to fund a roster and a program capable of winning. “I think you got to fight and scratch and claw for everything that you got, and you got to bring these kids together as quickly as you possibly can that maybe never played together before, and with coaches that maybe never coached together before,” Chesney told me. “So the continuity we have coming from JMU to here [UCLA], bringing some coaches and players, I think is paying itself forward quite a bit. “But ultimately, I agree with the sentiment. It is a challenge to end up on the left side of that column.” The way I see it, 2019 Oklahoma would’ve never seen a semifinal in this new era of ball. LSU might’ve never had a chance to stomp a mudhole in the Sooners and walk it dry, as it would’ve been the No. 1 seed in a 12-team CFP. 2025 Oklahoma might have beaten that 2019 team by three scores, and it gave up the booty (a synonym for treasure, you cad) at home while up 17-0 to an Alabama team that got RKO’d by Indiana. That same Indiana program was a dumpster dweller in 2023. Then Curt Cignetti arrived, and a program I ranked 97th in the 2024 Ultimate 134 CFB Ranking ended its season 11-2 with a berth in the CFP. Perhaps a previous Oklahoma team would’ve earned a No. 4 seed based on record. But so did Texas Tech in 2025, and the Ducks showed you what happens when the defense is as supremely over-matched as the Red Raiders were in the face of a better team. And Miami showed what can happen if the right quarterback walks through the door at the right time. Still, neither Mario Cristobal nor Miami has ever won the ACC championship because it’s damn hard to do. The players are smarter and older, and there’s never been more money and resources behind them. Consider that a player can make 60 starts over the course of their career and as many as 80 with the new rules. It’s not hard for a Power Four starting quarterback to clear $30 million over five years. I need to catch up people here: This is professional football with a term limit. It will be a theme in my work this year. This is the story of 2026, a sport that is quite literally ungovernable and getting older, more skilled, smarter by the day. It’s never been harder to move the ball. FBS teams averaged just 383.5 yards per game in 2025. That’s the lowest output for total offense per game across the subdivision since 2010. It’s never been harder to score, either. FBS teams averaged just 27.5 points per game last season, and that’s the lowest average points per game across the subdivisions since 2010, too. Predictably, though, since clock rules changed in 2023, offenses are running fewer plays and seeing fewer possessions. Couple that with the knowledge that defenses are increasingly built not to take the ball away or create negative plays but to prevent offenses from executing explosive plays. “It’s a hell of a lot harder for an offense to run a 15-play drive for a score than it is for them to hit me over the head for 70 yards on one play,” a Group of Six defensive coordinator told me. “We play sound defense and let the offense do the screwing up.” If football is a chess game — and I believe it is — the game has turned from one that values fast-forcing moves and aggressive tactics to one that is simply about eliminating blunders, building a formidable defense and waiting for your opponent to blunder. And if you play with too much tempo — don’t castle your king to safety to press your advantage — that can hurt you in the endgame. This is precisely why Lincoln Riley hired College Football Hall of Fame coach Gary Patterson to coordinate his defense at USC. Riley has famously had a difficult time partnering with a defensive play-caller who can keep up with his explosive offense. When the defense plays as many snaps as it can when Riley’s offense is its partner, that’s more chances to get beat, more chances for mistakes to happen, more chances for the opposing team to find its way back into a game Riley’s teams should be able to put away late in the second half. This has made the game about psychology as much as physicality and preparedness. “Quarterbacks and OCs are people, too,” the same defensive coordinator told me. “They want to throw the ball downfield. They don’t like checking down. They don’t like field goals, and they hate punting. Most immature quarterbacks throw into coverage because they’re frustrated. We want to frustrate quarterbacks.” But quarterbacks are older and have played more football than their predecessors, and that’s only going to become an even more pronounced signifier of just how difficult it is to win in the modern game. Thanks to the NCAA’s new eligibility rule, players have five years to play five years. That means a college football player could make 60 regular season starts and as many as 80 career starts before leaving the sport. Some of those players return this season. Texas offensive lineman Cole Hutson is taking advantage of the fifth-year rule and could end this season with 60 games played if he plays in all 12 of Texas’ regular season games. Colorado coach Deion Sanders lamented the age eligibility rule as it makes it harder for him to field and recruit a team. “It affects your recruiting,” he said. Doesn’t everything, Prime? There has never been a more skilled and experienced labor force in college football than there is now, and because these players are experienced, they take on new concepts and complicated systems better. Multiple tight ends in a formation on one play. A fullback in formation on another. Four wide receivers in a bunch formation in another. This is the kind of sequence offenses can use to force defenses to show themselves, their coverages, that might not have been available to most teams because offensive players just didn’t have time to learn as much as they do now. Programs with returning play-callers and head coaches are just reinforcing their systems each year but adding to them to make themselves more difficult to stop. The inverse is also true. Defenses are more complex, better drilled and prepared for the challenges offenses will present. In this way, offenses and defenses are sharpening each other — growing older and more experienced together — and are able to play at a level heretofore unseen in the sport. That means it’s never been harder to win a college football game. That also means it’s never been a better time to be a college football fan.