Why 2026 Could Feel Like a Throwback Season for College Football Quarterbacks

Big Ten returning quarterbacks headline an old-school class of familiar stars in 2026

With as profoundly as college football’s makeup has changed in the last half-decade, the sport’s longtime fans should take comfort in the 2026 season offering some familiarity in collection of established stars returning at quarterback.

One of, if not the top quarterback in each of the Power Four conferences is a signal caller rejoining the same team he guided a year ago.

Now, that probably wouldn’t have been newsworthy before the COVID-19 years. But after the last two National Championship Games exclusively featured starting quarterbacks who were one-year transfers, the coming campaign feels more like a time predating the relaxed portal.

The Big Ten provides the ideal jumping-off point, both for producing the last three national champions — two with first-year transfers behind center in Ohio State’s Will Howard and Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza — and boasting the most impressive collection of returning quarterback talent in 2026.

The conference’s reigning Freshman of the Year Julian Sayin made his way to Ohio State via Alabama, but was not a candidate to reenter the transfer portal. We are in an age with NIL money that makes the words of former West Texas A&M football player Ted DiBiase especially prophetic: Everybody has a price.

However, Sayin revealed on an appearance with The Triple Option Podcast in May that other programs’ financiers knew better than to even approach the quarterback.

“Everybody knew I was a Buckeye,” Sayin said.

So Sayin returning to Ohio State may not be a surprise, but it is a bit eyebrow-raising — and reflective of college football’s state in the last few years — that he’ll be Ryan Day’s first multiple-season starting signal caller since CJ Stroud in 2021 and 2022.

Sayin headlines a deep Big Ten class that also includes Dante Moore, who spurned the NFL draft for another season at Oregon, and a quarterback who may be poised to break out as the nation’s top playmaker in 2026, Jayden Maiava.

When it comes to the college football landscape looking much different 2026 than it did in recent generations past, the thought of a USC quarterback perhaps flying under the radar is a prime example. Such is the case for Maiava, though.

Maiava is headed into his third season as Trojans starting quarterback, making him a veritable grizzled old vet in a present-day context. His steady progression from originally arriving at USC from UNLV as a back-up, to being worthy of mention alongside leading Heisman Trophy candidates, has an aura like memorable college careers of yesteryear.

Maiava’s journey to lead a potential Playoff contender also defies some of USC coach Lincoln Riley’s recent successes. Riley coached four Heisman Finalist quarterbacks over the previous eight years; three were invited to New York in their first (and on two occasions, only) season after switching programs.

Although 2022 Heisman winner Caleb Williams was no stranger to Riley, following the coach from Oklahoma to Southern California, is Sooners predecessors Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts made Riley stand out as something of a forerunner in leveraging established, transfer talent.

“Of all the guys I've been fortunate enough to coach, I don't know that I've had any that have improved from day one to this point as much as Jayden has,” Riley said at last month’s Big Ten media days. “It's been fun to see him grow as a player and leader, starting to embrace what it means to be the starting quarterback at USC.”

The familiar quarterback feel in 2026 is hardly exclusive to the Big Ten, either. In fact, with three quarterbacks returning to the SEC from leading Playoff teams a season ago — Gunner Stockton, Trinidad Chambliss and Marcel Reed — the league might have an argument it’s better stocked at the position than its rival conference to the north.

And that’s before accounting for the intrigue following Arch Manning into his second season as the starting quarterback for Texas.

Manning’s arc from preseason Heisman favorite before ever starting a game, to written off in The Athletic as a “bust” in early October, followed by a rather quietly outstanding final month sends him into Year 2 captaining the Longhorns poised to be the player many anticipated seeing in 2025.

His presence on the sideline opposite Sayin in Week 2 is the ideal avatar for the Season of the Returner — and it’s not even the only such matchup that Saturday.

Extending the theme beyond the two most prominent conferences, the Big 12 slate features an early-season showdown that could prove instrumental in determining the conference championship. Arizona and Noah Fifita, entering his fourth season as the Wildcats starting quarterback, meets BYU with returning Big 12 Freshman of the Year Bear Bachmeier.

It’s a rematch of a classic featuring the two quarterbacks a year ago, in which the Cougars rallied for an overtime win in Tucson. It’s also the first of similarly high-stakes games for Bachmeier and BYU facing opponents with an established playmaker, as Cougars rival Utah welcomes back Devon Dampier.

In this cycle of seasons so often headlined by transfers, the familiarity at quarterback in 2026 is a welcomed return to the old days.