Forde-Yard Dash: Gauging College Football’s 10 Biggest 2026 Pressure Points

From LSU’s all-in gamble to Kalen DeBoer’s warming seat, these are the people and programs with the most at stake this season.

Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer has not yet lived up to the standard set by Nick Saban. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football (karma boomerangs sold separately on the Main Line, where Villanova got hit upside the head with a doozy Friday night after winning a late eligibility ruling). 

First Quarter: Welcome to the Pressure Cooker 

Hear that? It’s football coming. Marching bands, roaring crowds, stadium sound systems turned up to 11. Smell that? It’s tailgate food cooking, fresh cut grass. See that? It’s the familiar colors of your favorite team, the uniforms you love, the riot of visual stimulation as two teams take the field of competitive strife.

Feel that? It’s joy. The season is here. Not a moment too soon, given the sport’s ongoing quest to sabotage itself.

The Dash would love to stuff every lawyer parading through the college sports space in a locker for a few days. Pipe down, counselors of chaos. Shove your billable hours where the Sun Belt don’t shine. The two most annoying topics in American society: who is on Ozempic and who is suing the NCAA. 

But there is little escaping that topic, since it is actively affecting who could be on rosters and on the field this week. Which is why a preseason pressure gauge can only start in one place: 

Lane Kiffin (1)

The LSU coach was already the sport’s greatest provocateur before he even started dabbling in adding NFL dropouts to his roster. Now he’s creating a new level of noise, with most of the rest of the sport—and all of the rest of the SEC—aligned against him. He is about to be the face of a university that seems dead set on starting the Mother of All Battles with its own conference.

Kiffin always lands in situations where large segments of the population are mad at him, then tries to deflect, deny, equivocate and occasionally fabricate. In this case, Kiffin has portrayed himself and LSU as passive beneficiaries of players winning lawsuits to return to college. He’s even kept a straight face while saying it.

What good fortune that so many of these erstwhile NFL aspirants just happened to file in Baton Rouge courts, including several that Kiffin formerly coached at Mississippi. It’s like a wayward Amazon truck just happened to pull up at Tiger Stadium and drop off a fresh load of talent that Kiffin didn’t even ask for.

This scam calls into question what Kiffin did with all that money he’d already spent on the LSU roster, which at least one coach believes is the most expensive in the country. That wasn’t good enough? He’s got to now add a handful of additional players who will, if they see the field, take playing time away from others who have been onboard all year? 

Whether it’s megalomania or insecurity driving Kiffin’s last-minute player binge, it better work out. LSU fans will tolerate just about anything but a coach who can’t win the big one.

Texas (2)

No program did better offseason work building a support system around its quarterback than this one. Now, Steve Sarkisian and Arch Manning just have to make the magic happen. Not just a little magic like a card trick; big magic like teleporting the Longhorns to Las Vegas for the College Football Playoff championship game. Five years into Sark’s tenure and three years into the SEC experience, it’s time for Texas to get over its Georgia block and any other shortcomings. 

The Horns are capable, but the downside here is steep. If any top-five team is a candidate to pull a 2025 Penn State–style implosion amid championship expectations, this is the one. A loss Sept. 12 to Ohio State would not be the end of the world, but might be perceived that way on the Forty Acres. If it is followed with other losses (at Tennessee on Sept. 26, against Oklahoma on Oct. 10), the free fall could be calamitous.

Dan Lanning (3)

If a fourth different Big Ten team is going to win a fourth straight national title for the league, Oregon is the obvious candidate. The Ducks are loaded, with just about every preseason question answered on paper (other than the performance of new offensive and defensive coordinators). 

They are 17–1 in their first two seasons in the Big Ten—until the playoff, where the Ducks were crushed in consecutive years by league members Ohio State and Indiana. Lanning’s record is ridiculous (48–11) but he and the program have to figure out the last step up. 

Marcus Freeman (4)

His head coaching career has pretty much mirrored Lanning’s. His record through four seasons at Notre Dame is similar (43–12), his recruiting and retention prowess is similar, and his deep institutional support is similar. Freeman has made it one playoff round farther than Lanning, though, reaching the national title game two seasons ago and whetting the appetite for the first Fighting Irish natty since 1988.

Freeman is finally blessed with a returning starting quarterback in CJ Carr, who has the chance to be the program’s best QB since (deep breath) Joe Montana. He also might have the nation’s best defense. If ever there were a time to wake up the echoes … 

Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman has a returning QB and expectations are high this season for a national championship. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Texas Tech (5)

The Brendan Sorsby transfer/legal challenge parlay busted, but the Red Raiders are still pushing in chips in pursuit of a second straight playoff bid. The non-quarterback roster is loaded, and expectations remain high for backup QB Will Hammond coming off a knee injury.

But just in case, and just because they can, Cody Campbell University added the ultimate wild card free agent QB last week in Tommy Castellanos. The former YOLO swashbuckler at Boston College and Florida State is reportedly competing for a backup position, but even then he’s one play away from becoming the freelance triggerman on the Tech offense. What could go wrong?

(The Dash’s playoff Flyer of the Year is from Tech’s conference. Houston (6) has an A-level coach in Willie Fritz, brings back productive QB Conner Weigman and went hard in the portal for productive players on both sides of the ball. If the imported offensive line and Tulane/Oregon running back Makhi Hughes come through, the Cougars will be a problem. They could also be the latest program from Texas to make the playoff, following Texas, Texas A&M, SMU and TCU.)

Indiana (7)

In the grand scheme, the Hoosiers are playing with house money for the rest of this century. They’ve done the impossible, and the impossible gets Curt Cignetti a lifetime free hero pass in Bloomington, Ind. But nobody in the major college sports realm since basketball coach Al McGuire at Marquette in 1977 reached the summit for the first time and then walked away from the profession, and Cignetti isn’t wired to retire anyway. So he and the Hoosiers now swagger into a completely different type of season than they’ve ever experienced.

There is a new standard of performance to uphold, while everyone else gears up to take Indiana down. Are the new players, many of whom were acclaimed and decorated at previous schools, as eager to embrace the culture as the overachievers from James Madison? Can perfection be perpetuated? How will Indiana handle transforming, in the eyes of some, from improbable underdog to a disliked enemy? Answers start arriving Saturday.

Ohio State (8)

Pressure never disappears in Columbus, it just fluctuates between simmer and boil. The temperature raises slightly this year. 

Ryan Day and the program checked two massive boxes each of the past two seasons, winning a national title in 2024 and beating Michigan in ’25. But after going 12–0 in the regular season and carrying the No. 1 ranking last year, the Buckeyes closed with two straight startling losses. Yeah, they were to the two teams that played for the national title—but Ohio State wants to be the team playing for the national title.

The Buckeyes begin the season No. 1 again, with the best player in the sport (Jeremiah Smith) and a Heisman Trophy finalist quarterback (Julian Sayin) and many other ingredients for massive success. All they have to do is back it up against a murderous schedule.

Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith is the best player in the sport. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Kalen DeBoer (9)

There are many coaches on the hot seat to start this season; is DeBoer one of them? Contractually, no. He was given a seven-year, $87.5 million extension in April, which should pretty well end any discussion of this being his last season leading the Crimson Tide. 

And yet: A 20–8 record in two seasons, after inheriting the most successful program of the 21st century, is short of the standard set by Nick Saban. DeBoer’s winning percentage of .714 at Alabama is less than that of Saban, Bear Bryant, Wallace Wade, Frank Thomas and, yes, Bill Curry. It’s just better than that of Gene Stallings—who won a national title in his third season leading the Tide.

Making the playoff last year was a fine achievement. Winning a playoff game on the road was even better. But following that by laying down in a blowout against Indiana is the last image we have of DeBoer’s Alabama program—a result that obscured what came before it. Starting the season ranked 13th, lowest for the Tide since 2008, provides DeBoer the rarest of opportunities for an Alabama football coach: the chance to overachieve.

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The Dash Playoff Bracket

If this is the last 12-team playoff, it would be a damn shame. That’s been a good number and a good format, even if the championship game is way too late in the calendar. Regardless, The Dash is here to hand down the bracket on stone tablets for the selection committee to copy come December:

First round 

• No. 12 Navy at No. 5 Oregon 
• No. 11 BYU at No. 6 Texas 
• No. 10 USC at No. 7 Miami 
• No. 9 Texas A&M at No. 8 Mississippi 

First-round byes 

• No. 1 Notre Dame
• No. 2 Indiana 
• No. 3 Georgia
• No. 4 Ohio State

Quarterfinals 

• No. 5 Oregon vs. No. 4 Ohio State
• No. 6 Texas vs. No. 3 Georgia 
• No. 7 Miami vs. No. 2 Indiana
• No. 8 Mississippi vs. No. 1 Notre Dame 

Semifinals 

• No. 4 Ohio State vs. No. 1 Notre Dame
• No. 3 Georgia vs. No. 2 Indiana

Final

• No. 2 Indiana vs. No. 1 Notre Dame

National champion: Notre Dame (10).

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