College GameDay’s Week 1 desk didn’t wait for the Big Ten to sort itself out before taking sides on the conference race.
With the league’s championship matchup still unknown, the picks were split across Oregon, Ohio State and Indiana. Lainey Wilson, the Louisiana native who joined the show in Baton Rouge, backed Oregon.
Howard did too. Saban went with Ohio State.
McAfee and Herbstreit both landed on Indiana.
Wilson’s choice came with the Ducks carrying plenty of buzz into the season. Oregon is ranked No. 2 nationally behind quarterback Dante Moore, and Dan Lanning brings back a senior-laden defensive front featuring Matayo Uiagalelei, Teitum Tuioti, A'mauri Washington and Bear Alexander. The schedule also gives Oregon a real runway: the Ducks miss Indiana in the regular season and do not face Ohio State until a November trip to Columbus, leaving the door open for an unbeaten December.
Lanning still hasn’t won a national championship at Oregon, but Howard has been vocal about the team’s upside, and Wilson’s pick gave the Ducks two votes from the desk before a Big Ten snap had been played.
Saban, meanwhile, stayed with the preseason No. 1 Buckeyes.
Ohio State returns quarterback Julian Sayin for his second year as the starter, and Jeremiah Smith enters 2026 with more receiving yards and touchdown catches than any FBS player over the last two seasons. Ryan Day’s team has not claimed the Big Ten since 2020, a run that includes consecutive championship-game losses, among them a 13-10 setback to Indiana last season.
The Buckeyes did win the national title two seasons ago, just not the league crown.
Indiana drew the other two votes, and that choice comes with plenty of weight. The Hoosiers are the defending national champions under Curt Cignetti and are slotted sixth in the preseason AP poll, a ranking that has already been questioned by analysts who think they were placed too low after last season’s finish.
TCU transfer Josh Hoover is set to take over at quarterback after Fernando Mendoza went to the NFL as the No. 1 overall pick. Indiana opened the season at home against North Texas as a heavy favorite.
The Hoosiers haven’t won an outright Big Ten title since 1945, and if Cignetti’s team repeats, it would be the conference’s first back-to-back champion since Ohio State from 2017 to 2020.
Rece Davis, who hosts the desk, has also made his own Big Ten call elsewhere, siding with Ohio State on a recent College GameDay podcast. He pointed to the Buckeyes’ narrow miss against Indiana a year ago as a reason to believe Day’s group gets it done in 2026.
The disagreement wasn’t surprising in a league this loaded. Ohio State, Oregon and Indiana are the only Big Ten teams ranked inside the AP preseason top six, and all three are entering the season with Playoff and national title expectations. USC, Michigan, Washington, Penn State and Iowa make up the rest of the Big Ten’s preseason top-25 contingent, giving the conference more ranked depth than any other league in the country.
The calendar starts with lopsided openers: Ohio State hosts Ball State, Indiana hosts North Texas and Oregon welcomes Boise State. But the three teams at the center of the championship debate won’t see one another until much later, which means the arguments around the GameDay desk are only just getting started.
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Oregon Just Got A Title Nod That Raises The Pressure Fast
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For Oregon, the attention is flattering, but it also comes with the familiar weight of expectation. The Ducks have been to the national title game before, in 2010 and 2014, and the next step is the one that has eluded them. Being talked about as a future champion is one thing, but living up to a forecast like this starts long before January. [Read more 🡒]