The old BCS formula is back for a moment, and it’s already giving college football a familiar kind of chaos.
When BCSKnowHow released the first simulated 2026 standings on Monday, Georgia came out on top with a .9858 score, and Notre Dame wasn’t far behind at .9425. The numbers put those two in their own lane, with a clear gap before the next wave of contenders even enters the picture.
Georgia’s rise makes sense on the page and on the field. The Bulldogs knocked off Alabama on the road, a result that pushed them to No. 1 in both the AP Top 25 and this BCS simulation.
It was Georgia’s first win in that venue since 2007, and it also ended Texas’ short stay at No. 1 after the Longhorns lost to Oklahoma 27-24 in the Red River Rivalry. The Bulldogs picked up 66 of 70 first-place votes in the AP poll and moved to 6-0.
The BCS score backs up the human poll. Under the old system, AP and coaches’ rankings were blended with several computer models, and Georgia’s standing shows how strongly the Bulldogs are viewed across both sides of that equation.
Notre Dame is right there with them. The Irish hammered Stanford 58-7 and stayed No. 2 in the AP poll while improving to 6-0. That kind of margin, combined with the perfect record, keeps them pressed tightly against Georgia in the simulated standings.
After those two, the field bunches up. Miami at 5-0, Indiana at 6-0, and Ohio State at 5-1 make up the next tier. Indiana’s narrow win at Nebraska kept the Hoosiers unbeaten and moving up the board.
Then come Alabama and Texas at Nos. 6 and 7, even with losses on their résumés. That’s the BCS at work - it never fully punished teams that had already built strong profiles against elite competition.
From there, the top 12 continues with BYU, Texas Tech, Ole Miss, Utah, and UCLA. The Bruins are the biggest mover in that group after upsetting Oregon, which sent them up nine spots in the AP poll to No.
- The computers liked them too.
After UCLA, the standings take a sharp drop. Missouri is next at .4668, and Iowa, Tennessee, and the rest of the pack trail further behind.
It’s all a throwback exercise, of course. The current College Football Playoff uses a 12-team selection committee, not the old mix of polls and computers. But this first simulated BCS board still tells the same story the weekly rankings often do: Georgia and Notre Dame have separated themselves, and everyone else is chasing.
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