For the second year in a row, Yahoo Sports is in the lab — er, on the couch — running a simulated season in EA Sports’ new college football video game, appropriately named “College Football 26.” Last year, things were a little wonky to say the least. In the three simulated seasons we ran last July, one had zero SEC teams make the College Football Playoff and all failed to accurately predict either the Heisman Trophy winner or the eventual national champion.
This time around, we’re mostly sticking to last year’s formula, with the biggest tweak being us running just a single simulated season. It’s more in line with the simulations we’ve run for Madden, NBA 2K and MLB The Show in recent memory, and after seeing the results, it appears as if College Football 26 is more in line with what’s reasonably expected for this coming season.
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Here were the parameters for the simulation:
One season in Dynasty mode was simulated, with pauses before the Bowl Game schedule and after the national title game for data collecting. We needed to select a team at random and received Kansas State for the simulation.
Quarters were set to 15 minutes, to generate the most realistic statistics possible.
Recruiting and other settings were set to “simple,” essentially fully automating the experience.
With all that out of the way, let’s fire up the fight songs and jump into what everyone is really here for — the results!
Screenshot from EA Sports College Football 26. (Credit: EA Sports)
Power conference champions
Things were fairly straightforward when it came to the champions of the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC, with two repeat champions predicted for the 2025 season. Clemson and Oregon each won their respective conferences with matching 12-1 records, while Florida took home the SEC title and Texas Tech captured the Big 12 championship…
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