Methodology

The CFB Super League Index ranks all 60 eligible teams into two tiers — a 40-team Super League and a 20-team Contenders group — using a six-factor composite score. The formula is weighted toward football, with basketball pedigree contributing a smaller share.

Eligibility

A team must be an NCAA Division I FBS football program. Schools without a football program at that level aren't eligible, regardless of basketball history, since four of the six criteria below depend on a football record.

The six criteria

Each team is scored 0–100 on each factor, then combined into a single composite rating using these weights:

• Football TV viewership (30%) — average national television audience per game, 2020–2025.
• College Football News poll ranking (20%) — final average ranking in the collegefootballnews.com poll, 2020–2025.
• Football win-loss percentage (10%) — average across the 2020–2025 seasons.
• Football national titles (15%) — recognized national championships in the last 50 years (1976–2025).
• Men's basketball national titles (15%) — NCAA championships in the last 50 years (1976–2025).
• NET poll ranking (10%) — final average men's basketball NET ranking, 2021–2025 (2020's tournament was canceled).

That works out to roughly 75% football / 25% basketball in the overall formula.

The automatic qualifier rule

Every current SEC and Big Ten member (34 teams total) is automatically placed in Tier I, the Super League, regardless of composite score — conference realignment has made these two leagues the clear starting point for any super league discussion. The remaining 6 Tier I spots go to the highest-scoring teams from the rest of the FBS.

Automatic qualifiers are not exempt from scoring, though: every team in Tier I, whether it arrived by conference membership or by composite score, is ranked against the others by the same formula. A weaker SEC or Big Ten program can rank near the bottom of Tier I, below teams that are more dominant on paper — it just can't be relegated out of the tier itself.

Tier II, the Contenders, is simply the next 20 highest-scoring teams in the country outside of Tier I.

The conference column

Each team's current conference is shown next to its ranking: SEC, B1G (Big Ten), ACC, B12 (Big 12), IND (independent), or G5 (Group of Five). This reflects the 2026 realignment landscape, not conference history.

How the trend indicator works

Rankings are reviewed and updated on a monthly cycle. Once the Super League Index has a prior update to compare against, the ▲/▼ trend arrow next to each team will show how many spots it moved in the overall 1–60 ranking since the previous update.

This initial release has no prior Super League Index update to compare against, so as a starting point, the trend instead shows each team's own movement during the 2025 season: its College Football News preseason rank versus its CFN final rank (both out of all 136 FBS teams). A team that rose from its preseason ranking to a better final ranking shows an up arrow; a team that fell shows a down arrow. This is a like-for-like comparison — the same poll, at two points in the same season — so it reflects real in-season storylines: a team like Vanderbilt rising from unranked in the preseason to a Top 20 final finish shows a large jump, while a team that opened highly ranked and collapsed shows a large drop. Starting with the next scheduled update, trend will switch to comparing each Super League Index update to the one before it.

Disclaimer

This is an independent fan project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the NCAA, any athletic conference, or any university. Component scores are compiled from publicly available performance history and are refined over time; if you spot something that looks off for a specific team, it's worth a second look.