Road to Glory in College Football 26 lets you live ou💜t the ultimate athlete fantasy, playing for a historic college program, winning personal awards, and hopefully l✨eading your program to the national championship. However, even the brightest football stars had to come from humble beginnings.

You likely won't see much action during your first season and will have to work your way up the depth chart by pe🗹rforming well in pract🔜ice and impressing your coach. Over time, this hard work and effort will pay off, not only making you a better player but also earning more playing time and eventually a starting role.

Coach Trust

Coach trust is exactly what it sounds like: how much faith your coaches have in you to execute their game plan. It can be increased primarily by making good plays in games, or if you aren't a starter on the depth chart, by performing well in practice.

Practice🌱 minigames wi🦋ll award bronze, silver, and gold medals based on how well you do. You'll be given 50 coach trust for a bronze, 150 for silver, and 300 if you earn gold.

As coach trust increases, you'll claw your way into a starting role while unlocking additional gameplay perks like the ability to call your own audibles or set hot routes. Conversely, poor choices on and off the field can damage trust, resulting in playing time being revoked.

Position Battles

When you acquire as much coach trust as another player in your personnel group, you can trigger a position battle. This will pit you against them in a series of three practice minigames. Score higher than them in two of the three exercises, and you'll move up the depth chart! Fail, and you'll need to earn more trust before challenging them again.

You can also move up the depth chart naturally when other players transfer, gr🍌aduate, or declare for the draft, but that's entirely based on simulation and RNG.

Coach Happiness

Coach happiness is a new system in College Football 26. While trust is earned over time and governs your spot on the roster, happiness is a bit more mercurial, shifting up and down based on your off-the-field actions.

Happiness affects the rate at which you earn trust. If the coaching staff is happy with you, you'll actually accrue trust at an increased rate, helping you advance your player faster. Unfortunately, if you've angered them, you can hemorrhage trust each week, resulting in continuous losses until you get back in the coaches' good graces.

The main way you affect coach happiness is in the RPG-style decisions you make in between weeks of the season. Making responsible choices can lift their spirits, while being rude or brushing them off will frustrate them.

Additionally, failing tests or exhibiting poor leadership through your Weekly Agenda menu can result in happiness eroding. Investing in those categories, however, can grant you passive happiness bonuses, so you'll want to focus your energy on those two meters if you find yourselfཧ on your coaching staff's bad side.

Happin𓄧ess can also naturally be increased by performing well in games and practices.