My top 5 schools to rebuild in EA Sports College Football 26
Everyone knows rebuilds are the best way to play college football video games. But who will I take from ashy to classy this year?
Last year, EA Sports released their first college football video game since 2013 and it hit the streets like crack in the 80s, quickly becoming the highest-selling sports video game ever in the United States.
After such a long layoff, and a spotty recent track record from EA, there were doubts about whether or not they could deliver the experience longtime fans expected from the franchise. While the game was uneven in some areas (Road to Glory mode was outright bad, they hadn’t figured out how to make the transfer portal sustainable, and there were some major balance issues), they managed to successfully capture what had always made the games so addictive, and the unique gameplay loop that’s only possible in college sports.
The most important part of the experience wasn’t the money-printing cash cow of Ultimate Team, nor was it whatever Road to the College Football Playoff mode was. The game’s core was exactly where it should have been, in Dynasty mode.
In pro sports games, dynasty/franchise modes get stale after a few seasons, when generic players with randomly generated names and faces start to replace real-life stars, but that’s actually where college sports games start to truly shine. Pro sports, after all, are star-driven in a way that college sports, where coaches who seemingly have life tenure and the actual programs (sorry, PROGRUMS) and universities take center stage, are not, which makes sense in a sport where careers tend to last between three to five years, and nobody can have a 23-season run like Tom Brady did in the pros. Not even Dillon Gabriel got to spend that long in college. The ability to draw in talent — to create pipelines that sustain themselves and give the program an identity — matters more than who’s on an individual roster at any particular moment in time.
College sports are also regional in a way that pro sports aren’t. Some of that is just math — there are 136 FBS college football programs now, and seemingly a billion more at other levels of competition, compared to just 32 NFL teams. Those NFL teams represent huge regions — you’re just as likely to be a Denver Broncos fan if you’re from Denver as you are if you’re from Wyoming or western Kansas, but college teams that aren’t among the absolute best (and richest) might only draw fans from a few dozen miles around the campus.
The stars come and go, but we’re really here to put on our school colors and rep our small corner of the country. We’re rooting for laundry here, you know?
Naturally, there are two ways to play Dynasty mode that are really rewarding:
Playing with your alma mater/local team
Taking some downtrodden poverty-ass program and turning them into a powerhouse
Once again, my alma mater is a bit too good for Dynasty to remain a challenge for long. My Kansas State Wildcats are conference championship contenders in a Power 4 conference, so they’re only suitable for online Dynasties with other users playing as other big schools.
So, I’ll be looking for dogshit teams to completely rebuild, slowly transforming them into schools that five-star recruits are leaving their families and flying across the continent to go play for. And I want it to be a challenge. I won’t be choosing anyone who’s won a national championship and is temporarily in an embarrassing state (so no FSU). I’m also not especially interested in taking on the weaker Power 4 teams, because those rebuilds tend to move a little too quickly on these games (sorry to Houston).
Last year, well before CFB 25 came out, I broke down the five schools I wanted to rebuild, and a few honorable mentions. I wound up doing every team in my top five except for East Carolina, as well as Hawai’i, which I livestreamed on Twitch for a while. A few thoughts on those before I get to who I want to take over this year:
UTEP
UTEP was a blast. The Sun Bowl is such a unique venue with great sightlines and, even though the team was mostly butt, they had a senior defensive end who was good enough to go pro in season one, and a great recruiting region (UTEP wasn’t penalized for its location nearly as much as I thought it would be), which kickstarted a pretty fast rebuild. The El Chuco alternate helmets are phenomenal too.
UL-Lafayette
The Ragin’ Cajuns were another pretty easy one, sitting in Louisiana with one of the few level four pipeline scores in all of the Group of 5. They also have great jerseys, and a fun history, and they felt like a natural fit when I moved them into the SEC when we outgrew the Sun Belt.
Temple
This one was a medium challenge, with a team that has won next to nothing in its 100+ year history, and the horrific “program tradition” score to match. Luckily, they’re a recruiting region that’s pretty good (like in real life, they do better in New Jersey than Pennsylvania) and that doesn’t feature many other great programs. It’s also pretty funny that their two rivals are Buffalo, also historically a sadsack program, and….Penn State. Good luck winning four rivalry games to unlock the coach skill tree that comes with it.
Buffalo
Rebuilding the Bulls was a hell of a time. They’re given very little to work with in terms of recruiting (they don’t even have a single level three pipeline score) and they also have very little historical success. Luckily, their beginning roster featured a player certain to get drafted (shout-out to Shaun Dolac) and the MAC is both the weakest conference in the game, and the one with the least athletic players, in a game where speed kills.
Hawai’i
The Rainbow Warriors were in an interesting position in that their roster wasn’t that much worse than the rest of the Mountain West (the o-line was ass though), and their recruiting region is guaranteed to produce a few four-stars every year (and the occasional five-star), but it also produces a low volume of players. And, despite being the only FBS school in the state, they have just a level-two pipeline score on the islands, while schools like Utah, USC, and BYU (all level two) and Washington (level three) can all poach local talent.
I might revisit some of these later on in the year, but for now, I want to try completely different schools. And two of my choices from last year, Buffalo and Louisiana, no longer need a rebuild, after posting 9–4 and 10–4 records, respectively (Temple and UTEP are still cheeks though.) Without further ado, let’s get into my CFB 26 picks.
Honorable mention:
Temple (again) (last year: 3–9)
I wrote a ton about Temple last year, but the fact that even Pop Warner and Bruce Arians couldn’t win much in Philly makes them an appealing challenge.
UMass (last year: 2–10)
UMass is a near-ideal rebuild, with decent jerseys, a relatively weak recruiting region, and little past success to speak of, as they have yet to appear in a bowl game since becoming an FBS program. I don’t like the idea of taking over an independent program so it’s great that they’re joining the MAC this year. They also have a pretty underwhelming stadium and some questionable mascot history.
San Diego State (last year: 3–9)
I still think those jerseys look way better from up close than from a distance, and that, even though they currently suck, this rebuild might be too easy. They have a level-four pipeline in SoCal, one of the best recruiting regions in the country, at a time when USC and UCLA are pretty underwhelming.
Old Dominion (last year: 5–7)
Their uniforms are pretty solid and I like the idea of taking on a team from Virginia, but they’re not quite terrible and a level-four pipeline in the “Tidewater” region should make out-recruiting the rest of the Sun Belt a breeze.
Hawai’i (again) (last year: 5–7)
Hawai’i should actually be an even more interesting challenge this year, now that bringing in recruits on visits will cost more the farther away the recruit has to travel. Oahu is in the middle of the damn Pacific Ocean, far enough that recruits get an “F” score for “proximity to home” even for recruits from the west coast. Rebuilding Hawai’i will mean having to really lock down local recruiting and making sure the best high school players from the islands resist the allure of bigger programs on the mainland.
My top five for this year:
5. Akron (last year: 4–8)
Last summer, I highlighted Temple’s staggering lack of historical success, but I’ve somehow found a program with even less to brag about. The Akron Zips (formerly the ZIPPERS???) football program was founded in 1891 and they have just one conference championship to their name. Even worse, they’ve only ever won a single bowl game, in 2015. They went winless just four years later.
John Heisman (yes, that Heisman) was their second-ever head coach, back when the University of Akron was Buchtel College, and it might be the program’s only claim to fame. Since making the jump from 1-AA (now known as FCS) to 1-A (FBS) in 1987, they’ve posted a losing record 29 times. Only one Akron Zip, Jason Taylor, has gone on to make an NFL Pro Bowl.
Fittingly, their biggest rival is Kent State, just 10 miles down the road, who just went 0–12 last season. It might have less national relevance than any other FBS rivalry game.
They’ve also apparently been banned from postseason games this year because they failed to meet academic standards for the second straight year. So, if I make a bowl game in season one, I’ll honor that by forfeiting the game.
The plan would be to rise to the top of the MAC, move to the Big Ten (I’m not calling it the B1G), and take on cross-state giants Ohio State, who will undoubtedly be stealing all the good recruits. At least they have a respectable level-three pipeline in Ohio to sign some decent players off the bat. Maybe hometown heroes like LeBron James and The Black Keys can send us some NIL money.
4. Wyoming (last year: 3–9)
Wyoming has a pretty ugly color scheme — the bowel movement-inspired brown and yellow combination is not what I would have chosen — but they have a fun logo and four in-game rivalries (including one against a Power 4 team).
But the main reason I want to coach the Cowboys is because of the recruiting challenge. Wyoming is the least populous state in the US, with fewer people than just the city of Memphis. And Laramie, where the campus resides, is only the fourth-biggest city (town?) in the state. Even if it was a great football state, there just aren’t enough people to churn out the talent necessary to sustain a high-level football program.
Shit, Rivals doesn’t even have a ranking of Wyoming recruits and only credits the state with producing five three-star recruits in the last 16 years. Not only will I have to pour resources into out-of-state recruiting, Wyoming doesn’t even have a single level-three pipeline in the game.
I’ll have to squeeze every ounce of talent out of whatever three-star recruits and transfers I’m able to get and play great football. But who knows, maybe I’ll be able to find a diamond in the rough, grabbing a future NFL MVP out of nowhere like Wyoming did in real life.
I’m going to try to take over what’s left of the Mountain West before joining the Big 12 and rising to national prominence.
3. Missouri State (last year: in FCS)
MO State actually graduated from being a directional school, shedding their old name, Southwest Missouri University, and they completed the glow-up this year by moving from FCS to FBS football. They’ll likely be the lowest-rated team in the game, even lower than fellow newcomers Delaware, who were more successful than them at the FCS level.
Last year, I chose not to play as Kennesaw State, a new FBS team with a tantalizing location in metro Atlanta, partly because I thought their logo and uniforms were lame. This year, I look forward to trying to see what I can do with the Bears, who are somehow stuck playing USC and SMU this season.
They play in Missouri, a halfway decent recruiting state, but recruiting will be a struggle regardless. 247Sports had their 2025 recruiting class ranked 136th nationally, lower than even some FCS teams. They don’t even seem to do particularly well within Missouri, and none of their signees are nationally ranked. They’ll have to hope the handful of Power 4 players who transferred to MO State in search of playing time put on a show.
At least Springfield, Missouri is a decent-sized town and is within about 3 hours of St. Louis and Kansas City. On the other hand, Springfield’s Wikipedia page has entries titled “lynchings,” “country music,” and “The Ozark Hillbilly Medallion,” so maybe the prospect of living there isn’t too thrilling.
It won’t be easy to overtake Louisiana (10–4 last year) and Marshall (10–3) to win the SBC right away, but I’ll try to get them there within a couple of seasons before setting my sights on the Big 12 or SEC, where we could face off against Missouri.
2. Air Force (last year: 5–7)
I’ve always been a Madden guy and I’ve played them all since Madden 95, back on the Sega Genesis, and hadn’t started playing the college football video games until a year or two before they got discontinued. Likewise, I’ve always been way more of a pro football fan than a college football fan, and didn’t really start watching college ball until my last year of high school. So, naturally, I gravitated toward pro-style offenses because the option was foreign to me.
I finally took on the famous triple option last year, playing as Air Force in an all-service academy online dynasty with some friends, and it is a fucking blast.
Obviously, recruiting at the Air Force Academy is a challenge in real life. Even three-star recruits are hard to come by, as a commitment to play ball for the Falcons is a commitment to serve as a military officer. No amount of cool special edition jerseys will change that. The video game probably won’t let me offer recruits flights in fighter jets either. And in the era of the transfer portal, it’s very difficult to transfer out of a service academy and even more difficult to transfer in. Oh, and they don’t really redshirt players, so you don’t get to hold on to guys for that extra fifth year of development.
None of those restrictions are in the game, so, to replicate the challenge of coaching a service academy, you have to do it yourself. No redshirts. No transfer portal. And no changing the offensive system to some meta bullshit from YouTube. Just the good ol’ triple option. It’s the game on hard mode.
Not only that, but they were the worst of the service academies by far last year, getting smacked 20–3 by Army and 34–7 by Navy. They have had an 11-win season and a top-25 finish as recently as 2019 though, so there’s hope.
Rising above the competition in the Mountain West and moving the team to either a rebuilt Pac-10, the Big 12, or the Big Ten with a bunch of cadets will take some work and I’m ready for it.
Florida International (last year: 4–8)
We all know the real reason I’m here. It’s not because of the famous South Florida beaches, nor is it because of the elite recruiting region. It’s not because of the views on campus or even because of the stadium, which is now hilariously named after Pitbull, and will remain so for the next decade.
It’s because of these:
I’m imagining a world where, much like it did for the Oregon Ducks, taking the field with unparalleled drip becomes a recruiting tool, drawing in talent from all over the country, looking to fulfill their dreams of looking very cool on boats.
I worry deeply for how my players might spend their NIL money in Miami, especially if they actually start winning games, but that’s a problem for another day.
Incredibly, the team has only been playing since 2002, so there isn’t much history there aside from two bowl game wins and one surprising conference championship in 2010, which they won despite being just 7–6 overall. Things have been pretty bad lately, with just nine wins over the last four seasons, and the program has been nondescript enough that it has the shortest Wikipedia page I’ve come across so far.
They’re not the worst recruiting team in the C-USA, but there’s still a real talent deficit — their 2025 class ranked just 101st nationally, so it’s not like there are building blocks to accelerate the process.
Over the course of the first few seasons, I’ll be looking to style on my C-USA opponents, scour the transfer portal to take every Florida State, Miami, or Florida player who’s unhappy with their playing time, then eventually move up to the SEC or ACC and become a national powerhouse.