In part one of this year's math-based preseason analysis of the college football season, we looked back at the 2025 season. Through that analysis, we learned about the historical accuracy of preseason polls (plus-or-minus 25 positions) and regular season win totals (plus-or-minus 2.2 wins). We also explored the impact of changes in ability, schedule, and luck.

Now it is time to shift focus to the 2026 season. Over the years, I have developed and refined a way to simulate the entire college football season using schedule information and preseason rankings as the only inputs. I will soon go through the full details of what I learned from this exercise.

For today, I will focus exclusively on what my analysis says about the Michigan State Spartans. We will take a close look at the Spartans' 2026 schedule from three different points of view.

Opponent Overview

The best place to start this analysis is with the simulation's inputs. Figure 1 below summarizes the preseason rankings (which correlate to team strengths) for Michigan State and the Spartans' 12 opponents.

Figure 1: Summary of the teams on the Michigan State football schedule in 2026, sorted by average preseason rankings. The bars give the preseason rankings for each team from five publications: Phil Steele, Athlon Sports, Lindy's Sports, ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI), Bill Connelly's SP+, and CBS Sports. The final labeled bar in each cluster is the consensus average of the five rankings. This is the number that I use to set the power rankings for my full-season simulation.

The Spartans' preseason rankings vary. Phil Steele is the most optimistic, ranking Michigan State as the No. 63 team in the nation. Athlon is the least optimistic about the Spartans, assigning a preseason ranking of No. 72. The other four publications have MSU ranked somewhere between No. 65 and No. 67. As a result, I have assigned Michigan State a consensus ranking of No. 66.

This is slightly worse than last year's preseason ranking of No. 58 and it is identical to the consensus ranking prior to the 2024 season.

As for the Spartans' opponents, the green and white have the misfortune of drawing two of the projected top three teams in the country in No. 2 Oregon and No. 3 Notre Dame. Michigan State also draws two additional teams expected to be top-25 caliber: No. 15 Michigan and No. 19 Washington.

Moving from left to right, the next pair of opponents are teams outside of the top 25 in No. 33 Illinois and No. 34 Nebraska. This is followed by a trio of teams which are all expected to be slightly better than Michigan State: No. 45 UCLA, No. 47 Wisconsin, and No. 52 Northwestern.

To this point, the Spartans' schedule contains nine teams that all project to be stronger than Michigan State in 2026. The tenth team on the schedule, No. 65 Rutgers, is projected to be on par, talent-wise, with the Spartans.

Rounding out the schedule are two MAC teams, No. 93 Toledo and No. 117 Eastern Michigan. As things stand in August, these are the only opponents on the schedule where the Spartans project to have more talent on the field.

The data in Figure 1 also suggests that there is some disagreement amongst the experts regarding the actual strength of several of the teams. UCLA is ranked as high as No. 30 by Steele while the FPI has the Bruins down at No. 64, on par with Michigan State.

Steele is also more optimistic than most about the prospects for Wisconsin (No. 27) while SP+ and CBS have the Badgers outside of the top 60. Steele also likes Rutgers (No. 46) more than anyone else, especially Lindy's which has the Scarlet Knights way down at No. 98.

Even Toledo's preseason ranking is a bit variable. The FPI and CBS have the Rockets ranked right around No. 80 while SP+ places them outside of the top 100.

Projected Point Spreads

Figure 1 provides a qualitative look at the schedule for Michigan State this fall. Figure 2 below provides the projected point spreads and the odds for the Spartans to win each of the 12 regular season games in 2026.

Want to know which games Michigan State is most likely to win, where the Spartans have the best chances to pull off an upset, and what the full-season simulation says about bowl eligibility? The remainder of this analysis breaks down the projected point spreads for every game, the Spartans' complete win distribution, and the most likely paths to a successful 2026 season. Subscribe to Spartans Illustrated to unlock the full article.