If you're ready to skip right past one more month of preseason prognostication to find out how this college football season plays out, we have the answers. We fired up dynasty mode on EA Sports College Football 27 and simulated the upcoming season over and over again to find out who makes the College Football Playoff, who wins the Heisman Trophy, which teams can win it all and which head coaches and star players are making moves in December.
When we attempted this project last August , the season simulations produced just two instances of Indiana reaching the CFP semifinals with no trips to the title game. But five simulations did have Miami playing for a national title, three had Lane Kiffin to LSU and one had Fernando Mendoza winning the Heisman.
We'll consider those minor victories that prove this isn't a total waste of time. For this year's edition, we've simulated the 2026 season a total of 26 times.
The results were completely up to the computer -- we didn't play any games and didn't adjust any rosters or settings -- and some of them were completely ridiculous. Here's what we learned from College Football 27's forecast for the season ahead.
Who makes the College Football Playoff? This year's 26 simulations of the upcoming season resulted in 42 different programs earning at least one College Football Playoff bid, including 35 teams from Power 4 leagues.
Miami led the way with 24 playoff appearances, followed by Ohio State (21), USC (19), BYU (16), Notre Dame (16), SMU (16), Oklahoma (15), Ole Miss (15) and Texas Tech (14). Defending national champ Indiana made its third consecutive CFP run in 13 of these 26 simulations.
Quite a few surprise contenders popped up over the course of these simulations. There were eight CFP bids for Nebraska and six for UCLA out of the Big Ten but zero for Washington.
Kansas State got into the playoff seven times and Colorado did twice, but Arizona and Houston couldn't break through in the Big 12. In the ACC, six different programs produced playoff teams, but Clemson had zero.
But the biggest shock came from the SEC and the lack of CFP bids for Georgia (three), Texas (three), LSU (three) and Alabama (four). That's a clear sign of the parity among SEC teams in the game's ratings.
Thirteen different SEC teams made it into at least one playoff (sorry to Arkansas, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt), but no team won more than six SEC titles over 26 attempts. College Football 27 had more love for Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas A&M than the league's usual favorites.
The game gave a tiny edge to the Big Ten over the SEC in total CFP bids (79 to 78) over the course of these simulations, while the ACC outpaced the Big 12. But once the playoff games kicked off, the SEC had a major advantage with more teams reaching the CFP semifinals and title game and more teams winning it all.
There were seven seasons in which the Big Ten got shut out of the CFP semifinals but only two where the SEC missed out. Ohio State made 12 different runs to the semifinals, but Oklahoma and Ole Miss each had 10.
We also had seven different instances of 9-3 teams getting into the College Football Playoff and going all the way to the national championship game, with three of those teams winning it all. The underdogs stepped up in quite a few of these seasons.
Among the 39 teams that pulled off first-round upsets, a dozen advanced all the way to the championship game and six teams seeded 10th or 11th won national titles. Unlike in 2025, these 26 simulations did not yield any two-bid seasons for the Group of 6.
Boise State earned the playoff bid in 13 of these 26 seasons and made three runs to the CFP semifinals. UNLV (five bids), Memphis (four) and UAB (two) were the only other G6 programs to get in more than once.
National title race Among the dozen programs that won CFP national championships over the 26 simulations, a clear favorite emerged: Ohio State. The Buckeyes won 15 Big Ten titles and went into the CFP as a top-three seed in 13 of their 21 appearances.
They made it all the way to the title game in nine simulated seasons and secured Ryan Day's second national championship in six seasons. All six of those title seasons ended with quarterback Julian Sayin and running back Bo Jackson putting up huge stats.
In one of Ohio State's 16-0 seasons, Sayin threw 48 touchdown passes with two interceptions and the Buckeyes got All-America seasons out of pass rushers Beau Atkinson (18.5 sacks) and Kenyatta Jackson Jr .