Big Ten again leads CBS Sports preseason college football awards, with Dante Moore, Dan Lanning and Savion Hiter highlighted

CBS Sports released its 2026 preseason college football awards, and the Big Ten appears again to be the league setting the early tone for individual excellence. The awards list, which spotlights a preseason coach, player and freshman, is headlined by Dante Moore, Dan Lanning and Savion Hiter, respectively, according to the CBS Sports announcement.

The most notable storyline is not just which names earned attention, but how consistently the Big Ten has produced the award-level profiles CBS Sports is drawing from. CBS Sports framed the selection in terms of dominance, pointing to a recent stretch in which the conference has won consecutive national championships, making it the most obvious place to look when forecasting the sport’s best performers.

In this 2026 preseason edition, Moore, Lanning and Hiter represent the three primary categories CBS Sports highlights before games begin. The structure matters because it projects different kinds of impact: a player award is about production and leadership at the position level, a coach award is about team-building and execution, and a freshman award is about immediate difference-making and development speed.

Lanning’s presence at the top of the preseason coach honors underscores CBS Sports’ emphasis on the kind of program management that keeps results consistent even as personnel changes. In the same way, Moore and Hiter being named at the player and freshman levels suggests CBS Sports believes the next wave of high-end performance is not only arriving, but arriving from within the same conference ecosystem.

Still, preseason awards are forecasts, not verdicts. They are designed to anticipate who will carry the most weight over the coming season, and they inevitably lean on established roles, expectations and perceived readiness. Early projections can be reshaped quickly by how quarterbacks develop, how schemes translate to live action, and whether true freshmen can handle the speed and complexity of Division I football right away.

For teams and fans tracking the 2026 title picture, the practical value of preseason awards is how they identify watch lists. If Moore is viewed as the player most likely to define a season, and Hiter is positioned as the freshman most likely to contribute immediately, then their teams become natural focal points for early-game evaluation. Likewise, Lanning’s coach-award billing puts a premium on whether his unit can keep its floor high while still improving week to week. The awards do not decide the season, but they do narrow the range of storylines that will matter first.