2026 College Football Tier Challenge
Draft ten teams — one from each of ten tiers. A win by a tier 1 team is worth 1 point. A win by a tier 10 team is worth 10. Every tier is worth about the same over a season, so all ten picks matter.
first kickoff of week 1
Scoring
| Event | Points |
|---|---|
| Regular-season win | Equal to the team's tier — tier 3 win = 3 pts, tier 10 win = 10 pts |
| Regular-season loss | −1, every tier |
| Beating the projected win total | +5 for every win at or above the team's target, which is one win above its projection. Beat it by three and that's +15. Regular-season wins only — see Teams & Tiers |
| Weekly captain | That team's points for the week are doubled. Each team can captain at most twice a season, so you have to spread them out |
| Reaching a bowl or the playoff | +3, once |
| Bowl win | Tier + 3 — a tier 4 team's bowl win is 7 pts |
| Bowl loss | Nothing. No penalty for getting there |
| Playoff berth | +18 (seeds 1–4), +15 (5–8), +12 (9–12) |
| Playoff win | +6 first round, +10 quarterfinal, +13 semifinal, +18 title game |
The captain
Each week you name one of your ten teams captain and their points for that week are doubled. The pick locks at that week's first kickoff and cannot be changed after, so it has to be in before anyone plays.
Each team can only captain twice all season. That is the whole decision. Your tier 10 team doubling a win is worth 20 points and your tier 1 team is worth 2, so the temptation is to ride your cheapest team every week — but you only get two goes at it. Spend them in September against cupcakes, or hold them for a game you think your team steals in November?
Fourteen weeks, ten teams, two uses each: you cannot captain everything, and byes will take some options away in weeks you were counting on. Captaining well is worth around 16% of a season — enough to decide a close race, not enough to rescue a bad draft.
Why tiers
Every team is rated in August from last season's results, returning production and recruiting talent, then sorted into ten tiers by strength — tier 1 the strongest, tier 10 the weakest.
A win is worth your tier number. Strong teams win often and score little; weak teams win rarely and score heavily when they do. The boundaries are drawn so each tier is worth roughly the same across a season, which is what stops the draft from being a race for the best teams — and leaves ten real decisions instead of one.