TEN SLEEPER teams in College Football in ‘26 | Always College Football

Always College Football with Greg McElroy

ESPN

Football, Sports

3.9 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A sleeper isn't "trendy"; it’s a team with QB clarity, a defined identity, and a narrow schedule path. That is why McElroy has Utah, Florida, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma State, Wisconsin and more as teams he thinks will be “sleepers” in 2026. Plus, McElroy explains why we are about to enter into a “quarterback reset” year. How fast can Sam Leavitt and Lane Kiffin build chemistry in the SEC? Will Darian Mensah be able to win tight games in November, can Michigan build a system tailored around Bryce Underwood’s strengths rather than forcing him into an old mold, can homegrown talent still win at Clemson in a portal economy and so much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So in 2026, in the expanded era of the college football playoff, the lane might be more important than ever before because you don't have to be flawless for 12 games.
0:10.6	You just have to be really, really dangerous the last six and survive the first six.
0:20.5	Hello and welcome in. It's always college football. I'm your host, Greg McElroy.
0:23.8	We're happy to have you with us here today. Another edition of offseason fodder.
0:29.3	We have gone through over the last couple weeks. We've given you a group of 16 teams that we view as legitimate contenders this year.
0:37.8	That to me is an expanded list, too, by the way, because had we done this show and structured
0:43.0	it this way, we probably would have only had between five, six, seven, eight teams maybe
0:48.6	in a given year that could win the national championship back in the 14 playoff era.
0:53.6	But now with the expansion to 12,
0:55.4	with more teams getting access, and frankly, with what Indiana did last year, we're going to
1:00.1	have to continue to expand. So what we want to do today is actually look at the teams that
1:05.6	might actually fit the mold of Indiana just a little bit, not saying that they're Indiana 2.0 to an extent,
1:12.9	but these are some teams that in some cases have new coaches. In some situations, they have a
1:19.4	big group of players that since followed their head coach to this new place. Maybe there's a team
1:26.5	or two that has just a flat out getable schedule.
1:29.3	That's what Indiana had two years ago when they made a run to the college football playoff
1:32.9	loss in the first round, but they built on that success in year number two. So we're going to go
1:38.1	through and give you a list of sleeper teams. It doesn't necessarily mean trendy. It just means teams that are flying out of the
1:45.2	radar a little bit and might be able to overachieve here in 2026. Then we are also going to document
1:51.9	the quarterback world a little bit. We do quarterbacks a lot here. That's my position. That's what
1:57.1	I played. So I know that position pretty well. And we're going to go through a list of teams that have different approaches to the
2:03.3	quarterback spot this year.
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