The 2026 college football predictions are officially on the record. Watch the full episode where I break it down here.
With the season about to begin, I sat down to answer some of the biggest questions surrounding the upcoming year.
Who wins the national championship? Which player takes home the Heisman Trophy? What team is ready to break out? And which highly ranked program could fall well short of expectations?
After considering some of the biggest contenders across the country, I made eight official selections on the Game Day Collective College Football Show.
The Official GDC 2026 College Football Predictions
National Champion: Ohio State
Most Confident Conference Champion: Ohio State — Big Ten
Heisman Trophy Winner: CJ Carr — QB, Notre Dame
Breakout Team: Oklahoma State
Breakout Player: Danny Okoye — DL, Oklahoma
Best Defense: Oklahoma
Best Offense: Oregon
Biggest Disappointment: Indiana
Some of these picks will look great by January. Others might come back to haunt us. Here is the case behind every official Game Day Collective prediction for the 2026 college football season.
National Champion: Ohio State
There were plenty of legitimate options here. Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas all enter the season with championship-caliber rosters. Defending champion Indiana cannot be dismissed either. But when it was time to make the pick, I went with Ohio State.
The Buckeyes enter 2026 as the No. 1 team in the preseason AP Top 25, receiving 40 first-place votes. Ohio State sits ahead of No. 2 Oregon, No. 3 Georgia, No. 4 Notre Dame and No. 5 Texas.
The biggest reason for the pick starts at quarterback. Julian Sayin returns after throwing for 3,610 yards, 32 touchdowns and eight interceptions last season. He was a Heisman Trophy finalist and is the only returning finalist from 2025. And he still gets to throw to Jeremiah Smith.
Smith enters his third season with 2,558 career receiving yards and 27 touchdown catches. No player in the country has accumulated more receiving yards or touchdowns over the last two seasons. That gives Ohio State an elite quarterback, arguably the best receiver in college football and a roster loaded with high-end talent.
There are concerns—particularly after losing important pieces from last year’s defense—but the ceiling is simply too high to ignore.
Why I am picking Ohio State
Ohio State has the combination that championship teams usually need: elite quarterback play, game-changing offensive talent, depth and experience playing under enormous expectations.
The Buckeyes begin the season No. 1—I believe they’ll finish there, too.
Official GDC Pick: Ohio State wins the 2026 National Championship.
Most Confident Conference Champion: Ohio State
This category wasn’t necessarily asking which conference champion would be the best team. The question was: If you had to confidently pick one team to win its conference right now, who would it be? Once again, I landed on Ohio State.
That doesn’t mean the Big Ten will be easy. In fact, it might be the opposite.
Oregon begins the season ranked No. 2 nationally, defending champion Indiana is No. 6 and USC, Michigan, Washington, Penn State and Iowa are all ranked in the preseason AP Top 25. The Big Ten has eight ranked programs entering the season.
Ohio State will have to survive one of the country’s strongest conferences.
But I’m betting on the Buckeyes’ combination of Sayin, Smith and overall roster talent to eventually get them to the Big Ten Championship Game and finish the job.
Official GDC Pick: Ohio State wins the Big Ten Championship.
Heisman Trophy Winner: CJ Carr, Notre Dame
Embed from Getty ImagesThe 2026 Heisman race has no shortage of quarterbacks capable of winning it. Arch Manning has all the attention at Texas, Dante Moore leads one of the nation’s best teams at Oregon, and Julian Sayin is quarterbacking preseason No. 1 Ohio State.
Not to mention, Darian Mensah will lead Miami and Trinidad Chambliss is back after helping Ole Miss make a College Football Playoff run.
But my official Heisman pick is Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr.
Carr started all 12 games for the Fighting Irish in 2025, throwing for 2,741 yards and 24 touchdowns. His 24 touchdown passes tied the Notre Dame record for the most through a player’s first 12 career starts since 1966. The efficiency numbers make the pick even more interesting.
Among returning Power Four quarterbacks, Carr ranked first in yards per completion at 14.06, second in yards per attempt at 9.35 and second in touchdown rate at 8.2% last season. Notre Dame also finished second nationally in scoring offense at 41.8 points per game with Carr at quarterback.
He’s already been placed on preseason watch lists for the Maxwell Award, Walter Camp Player of the Year, Davey O’Brien Award and Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award. The stage is there. Now Carr has to take another step.
If Notre Dame remains in the national championship race and Carr becomes the clear centerpiece of the offense, he should have the resume and national exposure necessary to make a serious run at college football’s most famous individual award.
Official GDC Pick: CJ Carr wins the 2026 Heisman Trophy.
Breakout Team: Oklahoma State
This is probably one of my boldest predictions, and that’s exactly what a breakout-team prediction should be.
I am picking Oklahoma State as the breakout team in 2026.
The Cowboys received only eight votes in the preseason AP poll, meaning expectations outside Stillwater are nowhere near the level surrounding the nation’s traditional contenders. That creates an opportunity.
New head coach Eric Morris is rebuilding Oklahoma State around an offense that includes several players who followed him from North Texas. The most important is quarterback Drew Mestemaker.
Mestemaker won the Burlsworth Trophy as the nation’s top former walk-on and was named the American Conference Offensive Player of the Year in 2025. Running back Caleb Hawkins also followed Morris to Stillwater, and both players landed on the 2026 Maxwell Award watch list.
Morris has described the rebuilt roster as a collection of “misfits”—players coming from different circumstances who now have an opportunity to prove themselves together at Oklahoma State.
There will almost certainly be growing pains, but Oklahoma State doesn’t need to become a national championship contender for this prediction to hit.
If Morris and Mestemaker rapidly transform the offense and the Cowboys become a factor in the Big 12 race, Oklahoma State could become one of the biggest year-to-year turnaround stories in college football.
Official GDC Pick: Oklahoma State is the breakout team of 2026.
Breakout Player: Danny Okoye, Oklahoma
For our breakout player, I’m staying in the state of Oklahoma, but we’re heading south to Norman.
Danny Okoye is my selection to become one of college football’s emerging defensive stars.
Okoye enters 2026 as a 6-foot-3, 257-pound junior defensive lineman for the Sooners. His production so far has been relatively limited, which is exactly what makes him an intriguing breakout candidate.
In 2025, Okoye appeared in 11 games without making a start. He recorded six tackles and two sacks. Those aren’t superstar numbers… yet.
The expectation behind this pick is that increased opportunity combined with Okoye’s physical tools and Brent Venables’ defensive system creates the conditions for a major jump. Oklahoma has no shortage of established names on defense, so Okoye doesn’t need to carry the unit himself. He simply needs to turn flashes into consistent disruption.
If that happens, his name could become much more familiar nationally by the middle of the season.
Official GDC Pick: Danny Okoye is the breakout player of 2026.
Best Defense: Oklahoma
Picking Danny Okoye as the breakout player wasn’t the only prediction I made about the Sooners. I’m also calling for Oklahoma to have the best defense in college football.
This isn’t based purely on projection; the foundation was already there in 2025.
Oklahoma allowed only 15.5 points per game last season while holding opponents to 272.5 total yards and just 77.3 rushing yards per game. The Sooners recorded 45 sacks while opponents converted only 28% of their third downs.
Late in the regular season, Oklahoma ranked among the national leaders in scoring defense, total defense, rushing defense, sacks and tackles for loss. Now Brent Venables enters his fifth season in Norman with another defense filled with experience and talent.
Linebacker Kip Lewis, defensive backs Peyton and Eli Bowen, and defensive linemen Taylor Wein and David Stone were among the Oklahoma defenders named to preseason All-SEC teams.
The Sooners themselves begin the year ranked No. 10 in the AP poll.
Notre Dame, Georgia, Oregon and Texas will all have arguments for the country’s top defense, but I’m betting on Venables and the Sooners.
Official GDC Pick: Oklahoma will have the best defense in college football.
Best Offense: Oregon
Ohio State has Sayin and Smith; Texas has Arch Manning; Miami has assembled another talented group of playmakers; Ole Miss has Trinidad Chambliss. But for the best overall offense, I’m taking Oregon.
It starts with quarterback Dante Moore. Moore started all 15 games for Oregon last season and helped lead the Ducks to the College Football Playoff semifinal. He completed 296 of 412 passes for 3,565 yards, 30 touchdowns and 10 interceptions.
His 71.8% completion rate ranked fourth nationally. Now he returns for another season rather than entering the NFL Draft. That’s a major development for an Oregon program beginning the season at No. 2—its highest preseason AP ranking in program history.
Moore has also been named a preseason first-team AP All-American and appears on the Maxwell, Walter Camp, Davey O’Brien and Johnny Unitas Golden Arm watch lists. Oregon will once again surround him with high-level skill talent and one of the deepest rosters in the Big Ten.
There will be plenty of explosive offenses around college football, but I’m expecting Oregon to be the most complete.
Official GDC Pick: Oregon will have the best offense in college football.
Biggest Disappointment: Indiana
This one needs some clarification.
Calling Indiana my biggest disappointment does not mean I’m predicting the Hoosiers to suddenly become a bad football team. Indiana begins the season ranked No. 6 nationally. That’s still a championship contender.
But expectations in Bloomington have changed completely. Indiana isn’t entering 2026 as the fun underdog story anymore. The Hoosiers are defending National Champions after finishing 16-0 last season. They now have a championship standard to live up to, and they’ll have to do it with a new quarterback.
TCU transfer Josh Hoover takes over after the departure of Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza. Hoover is an experienced and talented replacement, and Indiana has added other significant transfer talent.
The Hoosiers could still win 10 games and still reach the College Football Playoff. But when you’re coming off a perfect 16-0 National Championship season, almost anything represents a step backward. That’s what makes Indiana such an interesting choice here.
I’m not predicting a collapse. I’m predicting that expectations following one of the greatest seasons in program history prove almost impossible to match.
Official GDC Pick: Indiana will be the biggest disappointment of the 2026 season.
The Predictions Are Official
No changing them now. The 2026 college football season will eventually tell us which Game Day Collective predictions were right—and which ones we would rather forget.
Now we want to hear yours.
Who wins the national championship?
Who takes home the Heisman Trophy?
Which team is ready to break out?
And which one of our predictions do you think will age the worst?
Join the conversation with Game Day Collective throughout the 2026 college football season as we cover the biggest games, rankings, storylines and debates from around the country.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josh Mahler
Editor/Founder | Game Day Collective
@realJoshMahler
