In 2022, which college football programs are most valuable in conference realignment?

When Oklahoma and Texas announced their plans to head to the SEC last summer, I took a look at which college football programs are the most valuable in conference realignment.

With Southern Cal and UCLA announcing their moves to the Big Ten, and a domino effect sure to follow, it’s time to revisit that list.

The factors in play here are still the same as they were last summer. Conferences want the biggest brands and the largest fan bases. TV markets are still important, though nowhere near as important as they were in the pre-cord-cutting round of realignment a decade ago.

So just how much is each college football program worth? Only the suits at the TV networks can truly put a number on each program’s value. But there are a few different ways to measure each program’s value relative to each other.

Southern Cal and UCLA will join the Big Ten in 2024.

No single metric tells the whole story, so I tallied up each program’s ranking in five different categories. Here are the categories:

Home attendance: The number of people attending each home game is one way to measure the size and passion of a fan base. College Football News calculated the attendance average for every FBS school from 2015–19.

Market size/share: In 2011, Nate Silver calculated the number of fans of each college football team using market population and survey data. The data would certainly look a bit different if redone in 2022, but it’s the strongest methodology for determining the number of fans that I’ve seen.

Valuation: After the 2019 season, the Wall Street Journal calculated how much each college football program would be worth on the open market if it could be bought and sold like a professional sports franchise. The valuations take into account revenues and expenses, along with cash-flow adjustments, risk assessments and growth projections.

Social media following: It’s not perfect, but one easy way to measure the size of each fan base is to look at how many people follow each team on social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). As TV moves over to digital, it’s valuable to look at which teams have the largest followings in the digital space.

TV viewership: Conferences expand with the goal of adding value to their TV deal, so what better metric to look at than TV viewership? I calculated each team’s average TV viewership from 2015–21 (not counting the 2020 season).

If you’re interested in the exact TV viewership numbers, here is the data from 2015–19, and here is the data from 2021.

Ranking the most valuable college football programs

Ohio State and Michigan are the two most-valuable college football programs.

After calculating each program’s ranking in those five categories, I dropped each schools’ highest and lowest metric, then averaged the rest. Here’s how 90 college football programs ranked from best to worst.

This list focuses strictly football because basketball rarely plays a large role in conference realignment.

I included all of the schools that are currently members of the ACC, AAC, Big Ten, Big 12, Mountain West, Pac-12 and SEC, as well as Army and Notre Dame.

1. Ohio State
2. Michigan
3. Alabama
4. Notre Dame
5. Georgia
6. LSU
7. Penn State
8. Texas
9. Auburn
10. Oklahoma
11. Florida
12. Texas A&M
13. Clemson
14. Tennessee
15. Wisconsin
16. Nebraska
17. Michigan State
18. Florida State
19. Southern Cal
20. Iowa
21. South Carolina
22. Arkansas
23. Mississippi
24. Oregon
25. Miami
26. UCLA
27. Washington
28. Virginia Tech
29. West Virginia
30. Mississippi State
31. Oklahoma State
32. Kentucky
33. Texas Tech
34. Minnesota
35. Arizona State
36. TCU
37. Utah
38. Louisville
39. Missouri
40. Stanford
41. North Carolina
42. BYU
43. Iowa State
44. Georgia Tech
45. Pittsburgh
46. Indiana
47. California
48. NC State
49. Kansas State
50. Baylor
51. Purdue
52. Arizona
53. Northwestern
54. Illinois
55. Colorado
56. Maryland
57. Virginia
58. Rutgers
59. Kansas
60. Syracuse
61. Oregon State
62. UCF
63. Boise State
64. Washington State
65. Houston
66. Boston College
67. South Florida
68. Cincinnati
69. Memphis
70. Vanderbilt
71. Army
72. Duke
73. Navy
74. East Carolina
75. Temple
76. Fresno State
77. Wake Forest
78. Colorado State
79. Wyoming
80. San Diego State
81. SMU
82. Air Force
83. Hawaii
84. Nevada
85. Tulane
86. New Mexico
87. Utah State
88. Tulsa
89. UNLV
90. San Jose State

Best programs on the board

Notre Dame is currently independent for football but plays other sports in the ACC.

With the Big Ten news this week, there is a sentiment that the Big Ten and SEC may continue to grow in the future by picking off the top programs from other Power 5 conferences.

So which are the best programs not already in one of those two conferences? After Notre Dame, four of the next six are current ACC schools.

1. Notre Dame (4th)
2. Clemson (13th)
3. Florida State (18th)
4. Oregon (24th)
5. Miami (25th)
6. Washington (27th)
7. Virginia Tech (28th)
8. West Virginia (29th)
9. Oklahoma State (31st)
10. Texas Tech (33rd)

Best Group of 5 programs

Memphis and South Florida play in the American Athletic Conference.

The domino effect from the top conferences making moves often includes some programs moving up from the Group of 5 into the Power 5.

So which are the top programs that could be in line to make a jump? There really isn’t one school that stands much taller than the rest.

1. Boise State (63rd)
2. South Florida (67th)
3. Memphis (69th)
4. Army (71st)
5. Navy (73rd)
6. East Carolina (74th)
7. Temple (75th)
8. Fresno State (76th)
9. Colorado State (78th)
10. Wyoming (79th)

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