Ready to get hurt again: Five college football teams Tom Fornelli can't quit going into 2026
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- Jon Sumrall arrives at Florida after going 28-4 in conference play across the Sun Belt and American and winning three conference titles in four seasons as a head coach; he brings OC Buster Faulkner and QB Aaron Philo from Georgia Tech.
- Collin Klein returns to Kansas State as head coach alongside QB Avery Johnson, and Fornelli compares the pairing to Klein's work with Marcel Reed at Texas A&M; the Wildcats' Big 12 schedule avoids Texas Tech, BYU, and Utah.
- Michigan State under Pat Fitzgerald has a 29-player 2026 transfer class, and Fornelli predicts the Spartans — pegged at 3.5 wins — will end a four-year bowl drought behind QB Alessio Milivojevic and DC Joe Rossi.
- USC returns QB Jayden Maiava and most of its offense from a 9-4 team, while the defense allowed 22.4 PPG in Big Ten play (seventh in the conference); the Trojans face Oregon, Ohio State, and Indiana but skip Notre Dame.
- James Franklin takes over Virginia Tech, a program that hasn't finished ranked since 2017 and is 30-36 in ACC play over the past eight seasons; Fornelli calls the 6.5 win total 'awfully pessimistic' and frames the ACC climb as easier than Penn State's Big Ten gauntlet.
Why it matters: Four of Fornelli's five picks (Florida, K-State, USC, Virginia Tech) carry win totals between 6.5 and 8.5, meaning the bar for 'outperforming expectations' is steep — and each of those four teams has a legitimate path to the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff if they hit. Three of the five (Florida, Michigan State, Virginia Tech) are also betting on new head coaches, so the column doubles as a referendum on the Sumrall, Fitzgerald, and Franklin hires before the season even starts.
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