Alabama may not be the favorite in ESPN’s 2026 preseason Football Power Index, but it still sits in a familiar spot near the top of the national title conversation.
The Tide are tied for No. 8 overall and rank third among SEC teams with a 3.7% chance to win the national championship. Texas leads the conference at 13.2%, followed by Georgia at 9%. At the top of the national board, Ohio State is No. 1 with a 17.1% probability.
That preseason ranking comes with the usual warning label. FPI is built to be much more useful once current-season results start rolling in, and preseason numbers have a history of looking shaky in hindsight. The 2025 version was especially rough, giving Indiana just a 0.9% shot at the title while Alabama was slotted fourth at 10.4%.
Still, ESPN’s model has at least been directionally right in recent years. From 2020 through 2025, every national champion landed inside the FPI’s top six in title probability. Alabama checked in third in 2020, Georgia was third in 2022, Michigan was sixth in 2023, Georgia was fifth in 2021, and Ohio State was fourth in 2024.
The broader conference picture is where the preseason numbers get even more revealing. In the 2026 FPI, 27 Power Four teams are listed at zero percent to win the national title.
That group includes nine ACC teams, eight Big Ten teams and seven Big 12 teams. The SEC has only three teams in that zero-percent tier: Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi State.
If you widen the lens to teams at 0.8% or below, the SEC still looks deeper than the rest. That list grows to eight SEC programs, adding Florida, Missouri, Auburn, South Carolina and Vanderbilt. The ACC climbs to 16 teams, the Big 12 to 15 and the Big Ten to 12.
All of that feeds into the larger conversation around SEC power and influence. Reports continue to suggest the league is not bluffing about the possibility of self-governance and a 10-game, or longer, SEC schedule. Most fans may not expect it to happen, but the case for it is built on brand strength and television value.
Last season’s ratings backed that up. Among the 25 most-watched games, 14 featured at least one SEC team.
Of the 10 regular-season games that drew more than 10 million viewers, eight included an SEC team. An SEC-only regular season, along with a 16-team or 8-team SEC-only playoff, could bring in massive media-rights money.
The Big Ten can point to three straight national championships. But when it comes to raw fan interest, the SEC still wears the crown. And last season, no team was picked for broadcast more often than Alabama.
In Other News...
Alabama Fans Are Missing One Key Truth About Ohio State Recruiting
Ohio States latest run through Alabama has become hard to ignore, but the part that gets lost in the hand-wringing is how many of those additions were never really Alabamas to lose in the first place. The Buckeyes have pulled seven players from the state in recent years, and several fit the same pattern: recruits the Tide did not heavily prioritize, or transfers who found a different path after their first stop. It is less a sign that Ohio State has suddenly cracked some secret code than proof that recruiting has become far more national, even in places where local borders used to matter more.
For Alabama, the real question is what this says about how the program evaluates its own board in different coaching eras. Some of the names Ohio State has landed from the state were not major targets for the Tide as prep recruits, while others surfaced later through the portal after their situations changed. The latest addition only sharpens the debate, because every new Alabama connection to Columbus invites the same uncomfortable thought for Tide fans: is this a recruiting problem, or simply the reality of a sport where elite programs now chase talent wherever it appears? [Read more 🡒]
Alabama Quietly Added A Surprise Piece To A Thin Defensive Spot
Alabama quietly filled one of its thinnest spots on defense by adding JUCO linebacker Bubba Odom to the 2026 roster, giving the Tide another body in a room that needed help after spring practice. Odom is listed on the official team site as a senior from Jasper, Alabama, and he arrives after spending time at East Mississippi Community College.
The roster move gives Alabama a little more flexibility at linebacker, especially with updated NCAA rules leaving Odom two years of eligibility. His path has already included stops at Northern Arizona and East Mississippi, and now he lands in Tuscaloosa as a depth addition who could become more important if the Tide need more options in that group. [Read more 🡒]
David Pollack Just Weighed In On Alabamas Kalen DeBoer Debate
Kalen DeBoers first two seasons in Tuscaloosa have already given Alabama fans plenty to debate, and David Pollack just added another layer to it. DeBoer took over after the 2023 season and walked into a roster that was badly reshaped by the coaching change, then guided the Crimson Tide to a 9-4 debut before a stronger follow-up in 2025 that ended with an SEC Championship Game appearance and a College Football Playoff win.
Pollacks point was less about the record and more about the circumstances around it, noting the scale of the roster turnover DeBoer inherited after Nick Sabans departure. That context matters in Alabama because expectations never really reset, even when the depth chart does, and it helps explain why the conversation around DeBoer keeps bouncing between patience and pressure as the Tide try to turn progress into something bigger. [Read more 🡒]