Yahoo Sports announces that they have created a new College Fantasy Football game for the 2026 season.
Yahoo Sports makes the biggest move that any content company has made in the past year. On Thursday of this week, they announced the creation of the first-ever College Fantasy Football environment that will be available for fans beginning in the 2026 season.
This gameplay will operate very similarly to the NFL Fantasy Football, but it won't be exactly the same. Some of the elements that are new are Team Offense, which gives you a roster spot to select a team, and their offensive production adds to your total.
They removed the kicker position, and the only teams that will be eligible will be the Power Four programs, which I think is correct.
For Penn State, this new game will expose them to a much larger number of fans than they typically would have. While Penn State is a national brand, they are going to be fighting for relevance in 2026 after the disaster of 2025. It is going to be important for the crazy fantasy football people to know who is going to be good on this team because their schedule is going to be gettable all year long.
Without getting too into the weeds, that is an example of what I think could be a very positive result of this.
There is a collection of fans that are just fans because of fantasy football. They have no allegiances or alliances, but they know what receivers to have in their lineup if they are in a PPR league or not.
It is those types of fans who probably pay no mind to college football that will trickle into the sport. Beyond that, a requirement to have a good team is to get the diamonds in the rough from teams all throughout each of the conferences. You can't just cherry-pick from Ohio State and Oregon. The best players will have guys from Minnesota, Northwestern, Mississippi State, and others.
While all of that is great, I think that this potentially opens the door back up for fans to continue negative energy and messaging to specific players.
Fantasy football is just one giant parlay. Sports gambling has created an environment where if a guy doesn't hit his yards or his touchdowns, then the fan believes it's their right to blame them.
This is exactly the same problem just dressed up differently.
Maybe that is too deep, but maybe it isn't. I think that is a very realistic outcome of all of this is that the players are exposed to fans from yet another angle.
It will be fascinating to see how it all manifests. For Penn State, my guess is that tight end Ben Brahmer is going to be the most rostered Nittany Lion in the first half of the season.
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