As the old Stan Lee proverb goes, 'with great success comes great responsibility', but you can amend that to say that 'with great success comes greater expectations'. And that's the best way to describe the general feeling about Miami Hurricanes football going into next season.
Brad Crawford of CBS Sports already has his first predicted CFP 12-team bracket for 2026 and wouldn't you know it, the Hurricanes have the top seed overall.
My first College Football Playoff bracket projection for the 2026-27 season: https://t.co/3oTfFGR9fZ pic.twitter.com/wysceQYWq5
— Brad Crawford (@BCrawford247) February 3, 2026
Crawford says of the Hurricanes: "There's no recency bias here coming out of the Hurricanes' national championship appearance. Mario Cristobal has another Infinity Gauntlet-like roster, landing his own Thanos of sorts after Duke quarterback Darian Mensah's recent transfer. "
CBS Sports' first mock CFP bracket has the Hurricanes at No. 1
In this mock, the Hurricanes would have a first-round bye and play the winner of the 8/9 game between Ohio State and LSU in the Peach Bowl. That would either set up a rematch from this past season's Cotton Bowl with the Buckeyes or set up some interesting coach hype between the serious style of Mario Cristobal and Lane Kiffin, who is living his best life as college football's resident brat and social media troll.
The rest of Crawford's top four are Notre Dame, Texas and Indiana. All those teams seem like good bets to make the playoffs, but it would be hard to see Notre Dame as a No. 2 seed if they lose at home to Miami on November 7 and, likewise, it would be hard to see the Hurricanes as a top seed if they lose to the Irish. He might have to fix that.
Crawford's mock has the Hurricanes as the only ACC team in the 12-team bracket. That makes sense because Miami is going to be a runaway favorite in the conference, and it's hard to see the ACC (or Big XII) being anything other than one-bid conferences right now, given the lock that the SEC and Big Ten have on most of the at-large positions and the benefit of the doubt given to teams in those two conferences by the selection committee.