ESPN computer predicts college football national champion for 2026

What the latest analytical predictions say about who will win the College Football Playoff national championship to cap off the season.

USA Today Sports | Imagn

The college football season comes down to this as the last two teams standing square off for the national championship. Indiana. Miami. For everything.

Indiana has smashed through just about everything in sight, leaving its forgettable football history in the dust and winning 15 straight games behind Heisman quarterback Fernando Mendoza.

Now, the Hoosiers have a chance to become the first 16-0 college football team since Yale in 1894. Not bad for a program that has the most losses in NCAA history.

Miami is looking for its second national title this century and has the luxury of playing the game in its home stadium, plowing through Texas A&M, reigning champ Ohio State, and Ole Miss to get here.

Looking ahead to the national championship, let’s check out the latest college football predictions from the Football Power Index computer prediction model.

The model simulates every NCAA college football game 20,000 times and uses key analytics from both teams and picks winners based on a projected scoring margin per game.

Indiana vs. Miami national championship prediction

The models foresee history taking place in South Florida.

When simulating the game 20,000 times and considering every possible outcome, the one constant was Indiana, which came out as the projected winner in the majority 68.3 percent of sims.

That prospect left Miami as the presumptive winner in the matchup in the remaining 31.7 percent of game simulations against the Hoosiers.

Despite the disparity in the overall projections, the models still forecast what could be one of the closer games Indiana plays this season.

Indiana is projected to be just 4.9 points better than Miami on the same field in both teams' current composition, according to the model's latest forecast.

If so, that would not be enough for the Hoosiers to cover the spread.

Indiana is an 8.5 point favorite against Miami, according to the latest game lines posted to FanDuel Sportsbook for the matchup.

College Football Power Index

Football Power Index (FPI) college football rankings and computer prediction model are a measure of team strength that predicts a team’s future performance. 

Rankings and scores predictions are based on 20,000 simulations of a team’s season and games, using a combination of key analytics, including scores to date, quality of opponents, team talent, recruiting, and a team’s schedule.

Teams are ranked not in order of talent like in other rankings, but by a projected point margin per game against an average team on a neutral field.

How good is the prediction model?

How accurate was the College Football Power Index computer prediction model last time out?

Projecting the most recent slate of games, the Power Index models correctly predicted 74 percent of all matchups and hit 48 percent against the spread.

Predicting a total of 799 college football games a year ago, the Power Index computers were correct for 70.964 percent of their final picks, ranking eighth nationally out of 55 other football models.

Over the last decade, the Football Power Index has proven correct on 75 percent of FBS college football game predictions, including in 73 percent of matchups when it favored a team with at least 70 percent likelihood to win.