NCAA Week 0 2026 Preview: Indiana's Title Defense, the Preseason Top 25 and the Jerseys That Matter

Somewhere between the Dublin kickoff and the first Saturday of September, college football stops being a calendar item and starts being your weekend. Week 0 is that hinge — the soft open before the sport goes loud. This year it carries an extra beat: sixteen wins, zero losses, and a trophy in Bloomington. The Indiana Hoosiers are defending a national title, and the entire preseason Top 25 is arranged around the question of who takes it from them.

This is the game-week preview — what actually matters on the field, and the jerseys that go with each storyline. For the full season calendar and buying strategy, the College Football 2026 Kickoff Guide has the deep version; the NCAA 2026 Season Hub has every team shop in one place.

What Week 0 actually is

Week 0 is the appetizer course: a handful of games on the last Saturday of August, headlined by the Dublin showcase, before the real opening weekend arrives with Labor Day. It matters more than the record book suggests. Teams that play in Ireland get a global audience a week before anyone else, and that exposure does something concrete — it starts jersey demand a full month ahead of everyone else's fan base.

The lesson from every Dublin game so far: if your team plays early, its jerseys move early. The rest of the country is still in vacation mode; you're already shopping.

The champions' burden: Indiana's title defense

Sixteen wins leave a very specific kind of silence. Indiana didn't just win the 2025 national championship — the Hoosiers went perfect, beat Miami 27-21 in the title game, and produced a Heisman Trophy quarterback who then went No. 1 overall in the NFL Draft. The whole arc — Bloomington to Las Vegas, college legend to Raider — is the reason Indiana Hoosiers jerseys stopped being a regional curiosity and became national inventory.

Now comes the hard part. The Heisman winner is gone, wearing silver and black on Sundays. What's left in Bloomington is the core of a championship roster and the most scrutinized quarterback competition in the country. The names on the jerseys tell you where the trust has moved: Omar Cooper Jr. carrying the big-play load at receiver, Elijah Sarratt as the chain-mover, Charlie Becker as the security blanket defenses can't solve.

NCAA · Indiana

Indiana Hoosiers #3 Omar Cooper Jr. Men Stitch Jersey - White

$69.90 · stitched

The new No. 1 option in Bloomington, in road white.

NCAA · Indiana

Indiana Hoosiers #13 Elijah Sarratt Men Stitch Jersey - Crimson

$69.90 · stitched

Crimson home look of the move-the-sticks machine.

NCAA · Indiana

Indiana Hoosiers #80 Charlie Becker Men Stitch Jersey - Crimson

$69.90 · stitched

The mismatch weapon in championship crimson.

Here's the collector's case for buying Indiana now rather than in November: the 16-0 jerseys are already a closed chapter — they commemorate a season that can never happen again. If the Hoosiers defend, everything re-prices upward. If they stumble, the perfect-season gear becomes the artifact. There is no timeline where the crimson of that title team gets cheaper than it is in August.

The other half of the story — the No. 1 pick jersey in Raiders black — has its own Mendoza spotlight piece, for those collecting both chapters.

The chase pack: Nos. 1–3

The preseason AP poll put Ohio State at No. 1, Oregon at No. 2, and Georgia at No. 3 — three programs that have spent the playoff era trading haymakers, all opening with a legitimate claim.

Ohio State is the evergreen buy: biggest brand in the sport, scarlet that reads from the parking lot to the last row of the Horseshoe. The sneaky smart pick is the retro route — an Eddie George stitch in white connects you to the last Buckeye era that felt this inevitable.

NCAA · Ohio State

Men Ohio State Buckeyes #27 Eddie George White Nike Stitch Jersey

$82.95 · stitched

Heisman-era Buckeyes retro, in classic road white.

Oregon at No. 2 means the green-and-yellow demand engine is running early. Ducks jerseys are the loudest colorway in college football — LaMichael James white is the clean version; the whole Oregon Ducks collection runs the full neon spectrum.

NCAA · Oregon

Men Oregon Ducks #21 LaMichael James White Nike Stitch Jersey

$82.95 · stitched

The clean white version of the fastest era in Eugene.

Georgia at No. 3 is the quiet monster — a program that treats the playoff like a standing appointment. Gunner Stockton's 100th Anniversary black is the one Georgia jersey that works as both team gear and design object.

NCAA · Georgia

Men Georgia Bulldogs #14 Gunner Stockton 100th Anniversary Black Nike Stitch Jersey

$69.90 · stitched

100th Anniversary black — team gear that doubles as design.

All three open the season inside the championship window, which means all three fan bases are buying now and buying again in December. The tier breakdown matters if you're deciding between the everyday stitch and the framed version.

The name that sells itself: Arch Manning and Texas at No. 5

Some jersey economies run on rankings. Texas runs on a surname. The Longhorns open at No. 5 in the preseason poll, but Arch Manning's orange has been moving like a top-three team's inventory since the day he enrolled — the name carries a demand that doesn't check the poll.

NCAA · Texas

Nike Texas Longhorns #16 Arch Manning Men Stitch Jersey - Orange

$69.90 · stitched

Burnt orange, the family name, and a Top-5 season ahead.

For Texas fans this is the season the orange stops being a legacy buy and becomes a contender buy — the full Longhorns collection covers both moods.

The retro counter-market: legends can't lose the starting job

Here's the Week 0 hedge nobody prices in: current-player jerseys are bets on a season. Legend jerseys are bets on nothing — the career already happened, the ranking can't drop, the transfer portal is closed forever.

The two safest retro buys in college football: Bo Jackson's Auburn blue — still the greatest athlete who ever put on shoulder pads — and Johnny Manziel's Texas A&M white, the jersey of the player who broke the sport's economics before he ever took a pro snap.

NCAA · Auburn Retro

Auburn Tigers Bo Jackson #34 Blue Men Stitch Jersey Under Armour

$82.95 · stitched

Bo knows. The most complete athlete in football history.

NCAA · Texas A&M Retro

Men Texas A&M Aggies #2 Johnny Manziel White Adidas Stitch Jersey

$82.95 · stitched

Johnny Football — the era when the Aggies broke the game.

The retro market has its own logic, and 2026 has been the year it went mainstream — the full argument lives in our throwback trend guide.

The road to Las Vegas

Mark the two dates that matter: playoff first round, December 19–20, 2026, and the national championship game, January 25, 2027, in Las Vegas.

Everything between Week 0 and the first round is a pricing window. Jersey demand tracks the bracket race, and the closer a team gets to Las Vegas, the thinner its popular sizes get. The entire NCAA jersey collection is at August pricing right now — which is the only guarantee this sport ever offers.

Before you ask — the questions everyone has