Team prestige directly determines how many recruiting hours you receive, including hours in the transfer portal. More hours mean more prospects scouted, more visits scheduled, and more chances to land elite recruits. Because recruiting feeds roster talent, which then feeds wins, prestige becomes the fastest way to CUT 26 Coins level up your entire program.
Prestige also influences other grades, like athletic facilities, creating a compounding effect over time. If prestige stays flat, everything else slows down with it.
How Team Prestige Is Actually Calculated
Team prestige is not a single stat. It's a composite average of all your school's grades. Each grade converts to a numerical value; those values are averaged evenly, and that final average determines your star rating.
You can view every grade that feeds into prestige in the My School tab. Each grade also includes a Ways to Improve section-but not all of them are worth your time.
One critical detail: team prestige only updates once per year, during end-of-season recap week. On top of that, different grades move at very different speeds. Some update weekly, some yearly, and some never change at all.
The goal isn't to max everything-it's to focus on the grades that actually move the needle.
Grades That Don't Affect Prestige at All
Let's start by eliminating wasted effort.
The following grades do not affect team prestige, even though they matter in recruiting conversations:
Playing Style
Proximity to Home
Playing Time
They help win individual recruiting battles, but they will not raise your star rating.
Grades That Are Completely Static
Next are the grades that technically count toward prestige-but can never be improved:
Campus Lifestyle
Academic Prestige
These are permanently locked for your entire dynasty. If you see them labeled as static in the My School tab, that's your confirmation. You should never plan seasons around improving these.
This also means that when choosing a dynasty team from scratch, static grades matter more than most people realize.
Fast-Moving Grades (Your Early Rebuild Boost)
These grades update weekly, making them your best tools early in a rebuild.
Championship Contender
This grade reflects how likely your team is to win a championship compared to the rest of the country. It's driven by two factors: media poll ranking and the Blue Chip Ratio (the percentage of four- and five-star recruits signed over the past four classes). Win games and improve roster talent, and this grade rises quickly-though it tends to cap out oddly in long dynasties.
Program Tradition
Also updated weekly, this grade tracks historical success. National championships, playoff appearances, Heisman winners, conference titles, and bowl games all matter, with major achievements carrying far more weight than minor ones.
Stadium Atmosphere
This grade measures home-field advantage and is influenced by home winning percentage, attendance, home win streaks, and team prestige itself. While it technically updates weekly, it moves very slowly and many underlying rankings are effectively locked.
Brand Exposure
This reflects national visibility. Playing in playoff games, championship games, Games of the Week, and nationally televised matchups all increase it. Deep postseason runs are the fastest way to move this grade.
Coach Stability
In theory, this reflects administrative confidence in your staff, based on job security, tenure, contract years, and coordinator continuity. In practice, it often behaves inconsistently, sometimes lagging far behind on-field success. It still impacts prestige-but treat it with caution.
Slower Grades That Lock in Long-Term Progress
These grades update yearly, but they matter immensely over time.
Pro Potential
This tracks NFL draft picks from your program over the last four years, weighted by draft round. Getting players drafted-especially early-has a huge impact. Be aware that at certain positions, alphabetical sorting can unintentionally influence rankings when no players are drafted.
Conference Prestige
This measures the strength of your conference. Improving your own program helps over time, but the fastest way to move this grade is changing conferences. Some conference ratings are misleading, so don't assume balance or depth based on College Football 26 Coins letter grade alone.
