Season outlook · 2026

Who holds the belt when the season ends?

Every program’s chance of owning the belt once the 2026 games run out, simulated from the remaining schedule as of 2026-10-05. Your team’s actual path is here.

49%Notre Dame still holding at season’s end

55Programs that finish with it in at least one simulated season

2,030Unplayed games walked, 20,000 times

1 Notre Dame Holds it now 49%
2 Miami 23%
3 Utah 5%
4 SMU 4%
5 BYU 2%
6 Memphis 2%
7 Texas Tech 2%
8 Iowa State 1%
9 Kansas 1%
10 Arizona 1%
11 Wake Forest 1%
12 Kansas State 1%
13 Syracuse 1%
14 Duke 0.8%
15 Virginia 0.5%
16 Navy 0.5%
17 Army 0.5%
18 UCF 0.5%
19 Boston College 0.4%
20 Virginia Tech 0.4%
21 Baylor 0.4%
22 Houston 0.4%
23 Oklahoma State 0.4%
24 Cincinnati 0.3%
25 South Carolina 0.3%
26 Colorado 0.3%
27 Stanford 0.3%
28 TCU 0.3%
29 Temple 0.3%
30 Clemson 0.2%
31 Arizona State 0.2%
32 UTSA 0.1%
33 North Texas 0.1%
34 West Virginia 0.1%
35 Charlotte 0.1%
36 North Carolina A&T 0.1%

How it works: every remaining game on every schedule is simulated 20,000 times using CFBD’s current Elo ratings (with a modest home-field bump). When the holder loses, the belt moves to the winner and the simulation keeps walking down that team’s schedule, exactly the way the real lineage works — so a program that never plays the current holder can still show up here through a chain of results. Bowl and playoff pairings only count once they are actually on the schedule. Programs below 0.05% are left off. Refreshed every pipeline run; a for-fun estimate, not a betting product.