Week 0 opened this season on August 29, with North Carolina taking down TCU 15-10 in Dublin. From there, it’s a straight run through to January 25, when the championship gets decided in Las Vegas. A lot’s different this time around – new conferences, new playoff math, and a TV map that barely resembles last year’s.
Placing bets
Ohio State opens at No. 1 in the preseason polls. Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas round out the rest of the early top five, in some order depending on which poll you check. Anyone getting in early through online sports betting will find futures markets already posted well before Week 1 – national championship odds, conference winner lines, Heisman favorites. None of it holds still for long. A single ranked upset in September can flip a line overnight.
A reshuffled conference map
Five schools packed up and left the Mountain West this offseason. Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State all landed in the Pac-12. Texas State made the same jump, coming over from the Sun Belt instead.
Louisiana Tech had to fight its way out of Conference USA through an actual lawsuit before it could join the Sun Belt on schedule. UTEP slid into the Mountain West to help patch the hole all that departure left behind.
New rules on the field
A few rule changes are in effect this season. Targeting penalties now carry a lighter first-offense consequence, with the carryover suspension removed for a one-year trial. The NCAA also adopted the NFL’s fair catch kick rule, dropped offensive pass interference to a 10-yard penalty, and added a third replay challenge when a team wins its first two.
A 12-team playoff, third year running
This will be the third season of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. Four Power Four conference champions now get automatic bids, along with the highest-ranked Group of Six team. In addition to this, there will be seven at-large selections.
Where to catch every game
TV coverage looks genuinely different this year, and figuring out how to stream on TV takes a bit more homework than it used to. The Pac-12 spread its new rights deal across three networks: CBS, The CW, and USA. The Mountain West split things even further, adding Fox and CBS to the mix plus a brand-new streaming service built with a company called Kiswe, meant to catch whatever games the TV deals don’t cover.
Hawaii, meanwhile, walked away from pay-per-view completely. Its games now air free, over the air, through a local station called Hawaii News Now, ending a setup that had run for over a decade the old way.
Watching player safety rules evolve
Beyond targeting, this year’s points of emphasis include continued attention to concussions and defenseless players, along with closer monitoring of feigned injuries and illegal hits on quarterbacks and receivers. Athletes’ health remains a central focus of the rule changes rolled out for 2026, reflecting an ongoing effort to tighten enforcement around contact that puts players at real risk.
A slimmer bowl season
The 2026-27 bowl slate loses three games compared to last year, with the LA Bowl, GameAbove Sports Bowl and Bahamas Bowl all discontinued. Two new bowls step in to fill some of that gap -– the Puerto Rico Bowl debuts in December and the Poinsettia Bowl returns after a decade away.
Marking the big dates
Week 0 opened the season August 29, and the regular season wraps December 12. Conference championship weekend follows December 4-5, with the College Football Playoff running from mid-December through the January 25 title game at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Between the new playoff format and a reshaped conference map, this season’s shaping up to look a lot different by the time it’s done.
