Est. 2026 · Independent Rankings

CFB Super League Index

The Super League is coming. Will your team have a seat?

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 seven-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 seven criteria

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

The first six criteria are long-run "brand" factors that barely move week to week; in-season performance is the one factor that reflects what's actually happening on the field right now. Together they still work out to roughly 75% football / 25% basketball.

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, recalculated at every update.

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. Because those 6 non-conference Tier I spots are recalculated every update using the same formula as Tier II, a Tier II team can promote into Tier I (and a Tier I non-qualifier can get relegated back down) whenever the numbers cross — this already happened in the Week 2 update, when BYU and North Carolina's in-season performance pushed them past Kansas and Duke.

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

The ▲/▼ trend arrow next to each team shows how many spots it moved in the overall 1–60 ranking since the previous update. A team can move within its tier, or cross the promotion/relegation line between Tier I and Tier II, from one update to the next.

For the very first update of the 2026 season, trend compares each team's College Football News preseason rank to its current CFN rank (both out of all 138 FBS teams) — the same poll, at two points in the same season, so it reflects real early-season storylines rather than a mismatch of different scales. A team like Baylor or Boise State jumping the rankings after a strong start shows a large gain; a team like Oklahoma State or Rutgers that opened with a bad loss shows a large drop. Going forward, trend will compare each Super League Index update to the one immediately 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.