The preseason CFB picture is already sorting the field, and four names keep rising to the top: Miami, Indiana, Ohio State and Oregon. Those are the teams Stew is most confident will get back into the 12-team College Football Playoff in 2026, even before the first snap of the new season.
That matters now because the search for playoff returnees has begun, and the first judgment is less about raw talent than schedule shape and conference math. Miami sits alone at the top of Stew’s return list because he sees the Canes as a level or two above the rest of the ACC, while Indiana is treated as a near lock at 10-2. Ohio State, meanwhile, has not missed at least 10 wins since 2011, and Oregon has the cleanest path of the group.
Stew’s case for Miami is simple: the Canes can get there by running the table in ACC play or by dropping one game and still winning the conference title. Indiana’s floor, he says, is 10-2, and that record is enough to get the Hoosiers in. Ohio State’s résumé is built on habit as much as projection; the Buckeyes have not finished worse than 10-2 since 2011, and their Big Ten slate includes trips to Indiana, Iowa and USC, with Oregon and Michigan coming to them.
Oregon is the team that ties the whole forecast together. Stew says the Ducks are the safest return choice, even as he argues Notre Dame, Texas and Oregon can all win the national championship. That is the hinge of his preseason call: one path says the elite teams at the top stay elite, but another says the bracket will still bend toward the Big Ten and SEC once the records shake out. He even says he would be shocked if a 10-2 ACC or Big 12 team got in ahead of a 9-3 Big Ten or SEC team with a couple of quality wins.
The reason is the schedule structure. Stew believes the SEC’s ninth conference game will drag those teams’ records down, but not enough to push them out of the field if they are sitting at 9-3 with resume wins. He says at least one 9-3 Big Ten or SEC team will make the Playoff this year, which leaves the conference champions and the marquee brands in a collision course for the final spots. That is also why Miami’s path looks cleaner than it did a year ago, and why Oregon remains the safest answer even while others can still win the title.
There is a broader wrinkle here, though. The same preseason logic that elevates Miami, Indiana, Ohio State and Oregon also leaves room for one unexpected squeeze-out, because a strong 10-2 team from the ACC or Big 12 may not be enough if the committee is comparing it with a 9-3 team from the Big Ten or SEC that owns a few bigger wins. That is the friction inside the forecast: the best teams may still make it, but the records may not tell the whole story.
The next checkpoint comes early. Before the big conference games fully take over, Stew points to NC State at Virginia on Aug. 29 and Colorado at Georgia Tech on Sept. 3 as the kinds of games that can show whether the season’s assumptions hold up. The Virginia question is whether the Cavaliers have another 11-win season in them, and the Colorado trip is a prove-it game for Deion Sanders coming off a 3-9 year and for new Yellow Jackets quarterback Alberto Mendoza. In other words, the playoff race starts with Miami, Indiana, Ohio State and Oregon, but the first evidence arrives fast.
Cfb 27 gives Road to Glory a NIL twist, but the mode still feels unchanged, and the same could be said for the playoff debate: the field is larger, the path is clearer, and the same old powers still set the pace.
