30 Day Countdown-Day 23: College Football Changes for 2026
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If you haven’t paid attention, it has been a very eventful offseason for college football. A lot has happened around college football since the end of last season. There have been conference changes, coaching changes, rule changes, and much more. And that doesn’t even include all of the drama around Demond Williams, discussions about expanding the playoffs, the drama around Brendan Sorsby, and the current work in Congress on the Protect College Sports Act.
Some of those changes have just been talked about for now and won’t be impacting this season. There are, however, several changes that will be impacting college football this year-in addition to all of the player transfers and incoming players. Some of these will directly impact UW’s team and games; others may not impact UW, but they may impact other games that you may watch this season. Let’s dive in…
5 For 5
One change that impacts football this year is the so-called ‘5-for-5’ rule. This should hopefully simplify roster management across college football, but it could cause some issues as teams work through what this means for their rosters. Coaches no longer have to worry about which players have played in enough games so they can or cannot redshirt; anyone can play as many games each season as needed.
With this change, there is no longer a need for a ‘redshirt’. And with 5 seasons, the designation of ‘freshman, sophomore, etc.’ doesn’t mean as much, so instead expect players to be referred to by their years in college football: “first year, second year, etc.”. UW’s roster has already been updated with these designations.
Based on a preliminary injunction by a US District Court judge a week and a half ago, members of the class of 2022 who had played 4 years can return to play a 5th year in 2026 (with some exceptions, including no transfers or pro players coming back to college) . The NCAA is appealing the decision. At least one of UW’s Big Ten opponents is taking advantage of this new rule and getting a couple of players back to play this year that were out of eligibility before this ruling: Indiana may be getting back Defensive Linemen Kellan Wyatt and Stephen Daley. And UW is also taking advantage as well. Former DL Ta’ita’i Uiagalelei has rejoined the team, giving UW additional depth along the defensive line.
New Coaches
It was another busy offseason for the college football coaching carousel, which actually started even before last season even finished. A total of 34 (of the 138, or almost 1/4th) FBS teams have new head coaches this season. (A full list can be found here.) Most fans are familiar with at least some of the changes since about half are in Power 4 conferences, including 4 in the Big Ten. Most of the coaching changes don’t impact UW this year. However, three of UW’s opponents this year do have new head coaches.
- WSU. Former Boise State WR Kirby Moore (brother of Boise State star QB Kellen Moore) takes over for Jimmy Rogers who left WSU for Iowa State after just one season in Pullman. Moore’s previous job was as OC at Missouri.
- Penn State. Former Iowa State coach Matt Campbell takes over for James Franklin who was fired mid-season last year. Campbell was 72 and 55 at Iowa State, and he was previously 35-15 at Toledo. Twenty-four players from Iowa State followed Campbell and transferred to Penn State giving him what should be a smooth transition to his new program.
- Michigan State. Former Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald is the new coach for the Spartans, taking over for Jonathan Smith who was fired after 2 seasons.
New Teams/Conference Changes
Two FCS teams have moved up to the FBS level this year so there are now 138 FBS teams! Perennial FCS powerhouse North Dakota State (which has won 10 FCS titles in the last 15 years) is now part of the Mountain West conference. Former Big Sky Conference member Sacramento State (which UW last played in 2015) is now in the MAC (Mid-American Conference). (I guess those conference affiliations make about as much sense as anything else in college football these days!)
The Pac is back…sort of. The Pac-12 conference is back to being a full conference. It has added 6 teams for football to bring it to 8. (It is still called the Pac-12 despite not having 12 members-yet.) UW will play two of those teams this season: WSU and Utah State. Former Mountain West teams Boise State, Fresno State, San Diego State, and Colorado State join the those teams plus Oregon State. The Pac-12 has also added Texas State, formerly from the Sun Belt Conference. (Also, Gonzaga has been added to the conference, but not for football.) The Pac-12 teams will all play each other during the season, but they will be doing something unusual this year. The final weekend will be a ‘Flex week’ where the conference will decide the matchups for the games about a week before. The final games will not count toward conference standings, but they will allow the conference to try to position a team to make the College Football Playoff. Also note that the Pac-12 will still include a conference championship game, so it is possible that two teams could play each other 3 times.
A few other teams changed conferences as well. Louisiana Tech moved from Conference USA to the Sun Belt conference. UTEP moved from Conference USA to the Mountain West conference. And Northern Illinois moved from the MAC to the Mountain West conference.
Football Schedule
The first games of the 2026 season will start on August 29 (referred to as “week 0”). The first game of the season will be North Carolina vs TCU. That game will be played in Dublin, Ireland. It will be broadcast on ESPN starting at 9 AM PT that day.
Because the start date for football is later this year, most teams will have only one off weekend (‘bye’) compared to two last year. For UW, that ‘bye’ weekend is October 23 which is after their 7th game. And it works out because they have to travel to play Purdue the weekend before (actually a Friday game) and they travel to Nebraska the weekend after, so they have time in between those road trips.
Note that this may be the last year of having just one ‘bye’. Starting in 2027 the football schedule will standardize on a regular season that is 14 weeks long-giving every team two off weekends per season.
Rule Changes (on the field)
The NCAA has approved some new rules this year. (For a more complete description, look here.)
The first new rule is a temporary rule change for this year. Previously a targeting foul in the second half of a game would include a suspension for the rest of that game-and the first half of the next game. The rule this year is that there will no longer be a suspension for the following game; the player will still sit out the rest of the game where the targeting occurred, but nothing further. (The 15 yard penalty will still be kept.) The exception is if this is not the player’s first targeting foul of the season; in that case a half-game suspension, or even a full-game suspension (for players with three or more targeting fouls in the season) will be levied. There is an assumption that if there are no problems with this change, it could be made permanent.
Another change to the rules this year is that the penalty for offensive pass interference has been reduced from 15 yards to just 10 yards. It seems that the NCAA finally decided that 15 yards was too severe of a penalty for that infraction.
One of the more controversial rule changes is around punt formations. There are new rules for punting as to what numbers players can have depending on where they line up. This is to reduce confusion as to which players are ineligible receivers on those plays. (In other words, it tries to remove some trick-play possibilities that coaches would try by hiding eligible receivers.) Now in most punting situations you should expect to see 2 players on each side of the snapper (5 players inside the tackle box); none of those 5 players would normally be eligible to receive the ball (essentially the same rules as if they were offensive linemen).
Each coach will have two replay challenges per game. If they win at least one, they will get a third challenge. However, the team must have a timeout available to initiate a challenge. They will not get charged the timeout if the challenge is successful.
The play clock is normally set to 25 seconds after a replay review. Now if there is a replay after the 2-minute timeout (2nd or 4th quarter) the play clock will be stopped when the Replay Official stops the game for review. It will be restarted after the review. If there was less than 10 seconds when the play clock was stopped, it will be reset to 10 seconds prior to restarting.
The list of actions resulting in automatic unsportsmanlike conduct fouls is being reduced and includes:
- Any form of gun violence
- Slashing the throat or a nose wipe
- Removing a helmet after the ball is dead (except during timeouts and equipment adjustments)
- Dead-ball contacts such as pushing, shoving, etc. that are clearly not part of the game action
- Forcibly pushing or pulling an opponent of the pile
And there is a new ‘Fair Catch Kick’ rule. This allows a team to attempt a free kick (e.g. field goal) from wherever they catch the ball after the kick (punt or kickoff). This would allow a team to attempt a field goal if they catch it in field goal range-for example, if the opposing team had to kick from deep in their territory and the catch was made in field goal range. Note that the place where the ball is caught would not be the new line of scrimmage but it will be the place where the ball will be placed for kicking. This could be a new strategy at the end of the first half or the end of the game.
There are several changes to uniforms and helmets including allowing a player to wear a second jersey with a plastic zipper in the underarm section that is not longer than 15 inches. But the biggest change is that the NCAA has also given approval for teams to have sponsor patches on their jerseys, so you may see them on jerseys this fall.
Several schools, including Ohio State and Notre Dame, have announced deals worth more than $16 million for including patches on their jerseys. Other schools that have announced deals are Illinois, Houston, LSU, Fresno State, and UNLV. (There may be more by the time you read this.) So far UW has not announced that they will have one.
Stadium Changes
Northwestern University will begin playing in the newly rebuilt Rylan Field stadium this season. The first game will be played there on October 2nd when the Wildcats take on Penn State. UW won’t play at that stadium this year, but they are scheduled to play there in 2027.
Illinois will debut the largest video board at any college football stadium this season. It will be 69 feet tall by 250 feet wide. UW will not play at that stadium this year, but they will be there in the 2028 season.
Post Season Changes
While the college football playoff didn’t expand to 16 or 24 teams, there are a few changes to the playoff format for this third season with 12 teams.
- The champions of the Power 4 conferences (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, and SEC) will receive automatic bids to the playoffs. (If this change was in place last year, Duke would have made the CFP.)
- The highest ranked Group of 6 (AAC, C-USA, MAC, MWC, Pac-12, and Sun Belt) team in the final ranking will get an automatic invitation. (If this was in place last year, Tulane would have still been included, but not James Madison.)
- If Notre Dame is ranked in the top 12 in the final CFP rankings, it will be included. (Last year they were #11 but not included.)
- The top 4 teams in the final CFP ranking will get first-round byes-regardless of whether they are their conference champions. They will also get to choose which of the CFP quarterfinal bowl games to play in. (Last year the teams were assigned by the CFP based on conference affiliation.) The quarterfinal bowl games this year are the Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Peach Bowl, and the Rose Bowl.
Most of the bowl affiliations are the same as they were last year. The Big Ten conference has the same bowl games as it had last year. BUT, the four teams that moved from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten (Oregon, UCLA, USC, and UW) are still tied to the bowl games that are affiliated with the Pac-12. That means that unless UW makes the CFP, they will be going to one of the Pac-12 bowls. And remember that all of the other former Pac-12 schools will also be eligible for the same bowl games.
There are, however, a couple of changes to the Pac-12 bowl affiliations this year. The LA Bowl (which UW played in last year) will not be played this season. It is being replaced by the Poinsettia Bowl. That game will be played at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego against a team from the (new) Pac-12 conference. Here is the list of possible bowl games for UW if it doesn’t make the CFP.
- Alamo Bowl (vs. Big 12)
- Holiday Bowl (vs ACC)
- Las Vegas Bowl (vs Big Ten)
- Sun Bowl (vs ACC)
- Poinsettia Bowl (old Pac-12 vs new Pac-12)
The NCAA has ruled that teams moving up from FCS to FBS (so, both North Dakota State and Sacramento State) will be eligible this year to participate in bowl games (assuming that they meet the other qualifications). Previously there had been a ‘probationary period’ after moving up to the FBS level.
In the past the NCAA has allowed teams with a 5-7 record can compete in bowl games this year if there are not enough teams with winning records (or 6-6 records). That has been the case in the past, but now the NCAA has ruled that the Academic Progress Rate (APR) will no longer determine which 5-7 teams will compete in bowl games.
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