There are dozens of teams capable of having good college football seasons in 2026. There are probably 15 or so with a legitimate path to the College Football Playoff, and depending on how loose you want to get with the word “contender,” somewhere between six and 10 could talk themselves into believing a national championship is actually possible.
But there are four teams I keep coming back to: Texas, Texas A&M, Indiana and LSU.
These aren’t necessarily the four best teams in college football, though some or all of them could eventually fit that description depending on how the season unfolds. No, they’re the four squads I believe will have the largest impact on how we experience this season. Texas enters another year with a loaded roster and national championship expectations after failing to reach the playoff in 2025. Texas A&M finally broke through under Mike Elko and now has to prove it wasn’t a one-year excursion toward greatness. LSU, meanwhile, handed Lane Kiffin the keys to the castle and told him that he can do whatever the heck he wants.
And then there’s Indiana.
There probably isn’t a stranger sentence in college football right now than this one: The Indiana Hoosiers are the defending national champions.
Two years after Curt Cignetti inherited a program that had won three games the season before, Indiana went 16-0, won the Big Ten, captured the national championship and completely rewrote what Hoosier football can be.
Indiana isn’t sneaking up on anyone anymore. The Hoosiers enter 2026 with legitimate expectations to contend for another title, even after losing a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback and several other important pieces from last year’s team. The question is no longer whether Indiana can belong among college football’s elite. It’s whether Cignetti has built something capable of staying there.
There are few people I’d rather ask about that than my friend Jason Hiebner, easily the biggest Indiana fan I know and also one of the smartest college football brains I know. So, with Indiana attempting to defend a national championship — still an objectively ridiculous collection of English words — I wanted to know how Jason is processing the Hoosier’s new reality and whether another run at the top of the sport is actually possible.
