Since the afternoon of June 30, when the college sports landscape abruptly lurched and shifted again beneath our feet, everyone has stewed over what the future will hold. When the realignment tremors subside, how consolidated will the elite level be? How many schools, in how many conferences, will command the highest revenue shares and (at least in theory) the best chance to win national championships?
The only certainty at this point is that the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference are the biggest and richest, pumping up their membership to 16 each in the coming years with the additions of USC and UCLA in the Big Ten and Texas and Oklahoma in the SEC. The question is how serious they are about continuing to get bigger and richer, and which acquisitions might further their power grab. Everyone is weighing options, as the 37 Power 5 schools remaining in the Atlantic Coast, Big 12 and Pac-12 jockey for position.
So this latest existential crisis in college sports seemed like a good inflection point for examining who really brings what to the table among the 69 schools currently in the Power 5, or ticketed to arrive in 2023. If you were to blow up every league and hold a draft to redistribute the balance of power, what does your draft board look like?
Maybe it would look like Sports Illustrated’s Power 5 Desirability Ratings—sure to infuriate, possibly to educate. Regardless, this is an attempt to apply some metrics to the debate. We ranked all 69 schools (see below for full list) against one another in five areas, some of which we know move the needle in terms of adding value to a conference, and some of which get a lot of lip service by leaders.
The categories:
- Football ranking: This is a five-year average of the Sagarin ratings from 2017 to ’21, using only the current and future Power 5 schools. Sagarin’s numbers are by no means infallible, but they do rank everyone and have been in popular use for a long time, so they’ll serve the purpose here. The top school: Alabama, to the surprise of no one. The worst: Kansas, also the surprise of no one.
- Academic ranking: This is simply the most recent U.S. News & World Report’s national universities rankings, released in 2021. University presidents like to talk about this metric. So do TV execs, when they’re trying to justify moving UCLA into the same league with Michigan and Northwestern. The top academic school among the Power 5: Stanford. The school at the bottom: West Virginia.
- All-sports ranking: This is the Learfield Directors’ Cup Division I standings for the 2021–22 academic year, which rates performance in 19 sports, with the mandatory sport counters being baseball, men’s and women’s basketball and women’s volleyball. The top overall athletic program: Texas, for the second straight year. The laggard of the Power 5: Cincinnati, which didn’t have much to back up that breakthrough football season.
- Football attendance: This was an average of home-game attendance (via NCAA data) from 2017 to ’21, tossing out ’20 since that season was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. How big is your stadium? And how many fans do you bring to it for home games? Size matters. The top draw: Michigan in the Big House. Fewest butts in seats: Duke, which last year averaged a sad 15,424 fans per home game.
- Broadcast viewership: This was the total number of football games that drew one million or more viewers: from 2017 to ’21, also tossing out ’20 due to the wide disparity in number of games played across the country. Citing media markets can be misleading; Rutgers being in the New York market doesn’t mean the Scarlet Knights are delivering an audience. The number of games watched by a million or more people better illustrates which teams are actually bringing eyeballs to screens. The program with the most games that reached the one million benchmark: Oklahoma. The programs few have tuned in to watch in recent years: Oregon State, Rutgers and Duke.
The overall top pick in a blow-it-up-and-start-over iteration of big-time college athletics would be Ohio State. The Buckeyes check all boxes: football excellence, quality academics, all-sports success and a massive alumni base/fan following that fills the stadium and watches the broadcasts. They narrowly outscore Big Ten counterpart Michigan.
Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch/USA TODAY NETWORK
Including future members, the Big Ten and SEC claim 13 of the top 14 spots. That’s why they’re making the big bucks and on the cusp of making much more. Notre Dame, a football independent and member of the Atlantic Coast Conference in most other sports, is the only school breaking up the Power 2 cartel at the top.
Outside of Notre Dame, Washington is slightly ahead of Clemson for the highest-rated school from outside the Big Ten and SEC. The Huskies have slid recently in football but are respectable across the board. Clemson obviously has had a superior football program but lags in all-sports ranking. (Which, ultimately, is the most disposable of the metrics here.)
The SEC’s additions of No. 4 Texas and No. 8 Oklahoma outshine the Big Ten’s additions of No. 9 USC and No. 18 UCLA, but both leagues made high-impact acquisitions that simultaneously gutted the Big 12 and Pac-12. The most valuable remaining schools in the Big 12 are Oklahoma State at No. 25 and Iowa State at No. 27, while the Pac-12’s new leaders are Washington at No. 15 and Oregon tied for 22nd.
The average school ranking for each Power 5 conference, using future membership: SEC 25.1, Big Ten 25.8, ACC 39.6, Pac-12 41.4, Big 12 49.3.
If the SEC and Big Ten were to expand to 18 apiece and had their choice of all the rest of the Power 5, the Desirability Ratings would suggest the following moves: Notre Dame and Washington to the Big Ten, Clemson and Florida State to the SEC. If they then went to 20, the Big Ten adds Stanford (with Notre Dame’s approval) and Oregon, while the SEC tacks on North Carolina and Miami. (The Hurricanes would face stiff resistance from some in the SEC who are not in love with The U’s current NIL recruiting philosophy.)
There could well be a fierce battle at some point over North Carolina. School and conference administrators and TV execs like the Tar Heels more than these rankings do. Former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany long theorized about bringing his alma mater into that league, and the SEC likely would also covet Carolina. Its academic profile, stature in the 10th-most populous state and appeal as a power in men’s basketball and Olympic sports would be an attractive commodity in realignment.
If schools could be kicked out of swanky leagues for failing to add much to the bottom line, these would be your most endangered members according to the Desirability Ratings: No. 65 Rutgers and No. 59 Illinois in the Big Ten, No. 63 Vanderbilt and No. 53 Missouri in the SEC. Could it ever come to that? Who knows? But nothing is inconceivable in a world where USC, UCLA, Rutgers and Maryland are conference brethren.
The best thing for everyone in the Power 5 would be a continuation of the Power 5. A viable, coast-to-coast college sports landscape would enhance the overall health of football and everything else. So here’s to hoping we see many more years of the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 as vibrant entities.
But if we’ve learned anything the past two summers, it’s this: Everyone is always looking out for their own best move and biggest pile of cash. Stay tuned, and keep the Desirability Ratings handy if the college athletics plates begin to shift again.
