First, the ratings themselves, because I know that's what you clicked for and also because you'll have more questions after you see them. Teams are grouped by conference at the bottom and below my methodology section which follows these ratings.
To make a hypothetical spread between any two teams, subtract Team B's rating from Team A, then add 2 points to whoever has home field advantage. Neutral site games are presumed to have no home field advantage.
| Rank | School | Conference | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Penn State | Big Ten | 26.2 |
| 2 | Texas | SEC | 24.0 |
| 3 | Ohio State | Big Ten | 23.4 |
| 4 | Clemson | ACC | 23.2 |
| 5 | Alabama | SEC | 22.7 |
| 6 | Notre Dame | Independent | 20.7 |
| 7 | Georgia | SEC | 17.2 |
| 8 | Texas A&M | SEC | 17.2 |
| 9 | Arizona State | Big XII | 17.1 |
| 10 | Michigan | Big Ten | 16.9 |
| 11 | Miami (FL) | ACC | 16.7 |
| 12 | LSU | SEC | 16.3 |
| 13 | Oregon | Big Ten | 15.0 |
| 14 | Missouri | SEC | 14.9 |
| 15 | Florida | SEC | 14.9 |
| 16 | Oklahoma | SEC | 14.6 |
| 17 | Auburn | SEC | 14.5 |
| 18 | Illinois | Big Ten | 14.4 |
| 19 | South Carolina | SEC | 14.1 |
| 20 | Ole Miss | SEC | 13.7 |
| 21 | Indiana | Big Ten | 13.2 |
| 22 | Iowa State | Big XII | 12.8 |
| 23 | Tennessee | SEC | 12.8 |
| 24 | Baylor | Big XII | 11.9 |
| 25 | Kansas State | Big XII | 11.6 |
| 26 | Texas Tech | Big XII | 11.5 |
| 27 | USC | Big Ten | 11.4 |
| 28 | Boise State | Mountain West | 11.0 |
| 29 | Louisville | ACC | 10.7 |
| 30 | Nebraska | Big Ten | 10.6 |
| 31 | Arkansas | SEC | 10.0 |
| 32 | Pitt | ACC | 9.6 |
| 33 | Utah | Big XII | 9.6 |
| 34 | Georgia Tech | ACC | 9.5 |
| 35 | SMU | ACC | 9.3 |
| 36 | North Carolina | ACC | 9.1 |
| 37 | Iowa | Big Ten | 9.0 |
| 38 | Florida State | ACC | 8.9 |
| 39 | Vanderbilt | SEC | 8.7 |
| 40 | Wisconsin | Big Ten | 8.5 |
| 41 | Minnesota | Big Ten | 8.5 |
| 42 | TCU | Big XII | 8.4 |
| 43 | Kentucky | SEC | 8.1 |
| 44 | BYU | Big XII | 7.3 |
| 45 | Colorado | Big XII | 6.8 |
| 46 | Boston College | ACC | 6.0 |
| 47 | Rutgers | Big Ten | 5.8 |
| 48 | Duke | ACC | 5.7 |
| 49 | Virginia Tech | ACC | 5.6 |
| 50 | Michigan State | Big Ten | 5.5 |
| 51 | Mississippi State | SEC | 5.3 |
| 52 | Washington | Big Ten | 5.2 |
| 53 | Houston | Big XII | 4.9 |
| 54 | Cincinnati | Big XII | 4.1 |
| 55 | UCLA | Big Ten | 3.8 |
| 56 | North Carolina State | ACC | 3.8 |
| 57 | Syracuse | ACC | 3.1 |
| 58 | Arizona | Big XII | 2.8 |
| 59 | Navy | American | 2.4 |
| 60 | Kansas | Big XII | 2.2 |
| 61 | Virginia | ACC | 2.1 |
| 62 | Buffalo | MAC | 2.0 |
| 63 | California | ACC | 1.3 |
| 64 | Maryland | Big Ten | 1.1 |
| 65 | South Florida | American | 0.5 |
| 66 | UCF | Big XII | 0.1 |
| 67 | Northwestern | Big Ten | -0.8 |
| 68 | Toledo | MAC | -1.5 |
| 69 | Tulane | American | -2.0 |
| 70 | West Virginia | Big XII | -2.5 |
| 71 | Georgia Southern | Sun Belt | -2.5 |
| 72 | Stanford | ACC | -2.6 |
| 73 | Wake Forest | ACC | -2.8 |
| 74 | Oklahoma State | Big XII | -3.3 |
| 75 | Oregon State | Pac-2 | -3.5 |
| 76 | South Alabama | Sun Belt | -3.6 |
| 77 | Army | American | -3.8 |
| 78 | James Madison | Sun Belt | -4.5 |
| 79 | San Diego State | Mountain West | -4.6 |
| 80 | Miami (OH) | MAC | -4.8 |
| 81 | Louisiana | Sun Belt | -5.1 |
| 82 | San Jose State | Mountain West | -5.2 |
| 83 | Texas State | Sun Belt | -5.2 |
| 84 | East Carolina | American | -5.2 |
| 85 | Liberty | C-USA | -5.3 |
| 86 | Troy | Sun Belt | -5.3 |
| 87 | UConn | Independent | -5.4 |
| 88 | Ohio | MAC | -5.6 |
| 89 | Washington State | Pac-2 | -5.7 |
| 90 | Hawai'i | Mountain West | -5.9 |
| 91 | UNLV | Mountain West | -6.2 |
| 92 | UTSA | American | -6.2 |
| 93 | Coastal Carolina | Sun Belt | -6.3 |
| 94 | Old Dominion | Sun Belt | -7.1 |
| 95 | Colorado State | Mountain West | -8.1 |
| 96 | Purdue | Big Ten | -8.1 |
| 97 | North Texas | American | -8.3 |
| 98 | Memphis | American | -8.5 |
| 99 | Louisiana Tech | C-USA | -8.6 |
| 100 | Fresno State | Mountain West | -8.7 |
| 101 | Appalachian State | Sun Belt | -8.8 |
| 102 | Bowling Green | MAC | -9.0 |
| 103 | Western Michigan | MAC | -9.5 |
| 104 | Marshall | Sun Belt | -9.9 |
| 105 | Louisiana-Monroe | Sun Belt | -10.2 |
| 106 | Wyoming | Mountain West | -10.3 |
| 107 | Central Michigan | MAC | -10.9 |
| 108 | Northern Illinois | MAC | -11.0 |
| 109 | Rice | American | -11.3 |
| 110 | Jacksonville State | C-USA | -11.4 |
| 111 | FIU | C-USA | -11.7 |
| 112 | Delaware | C-USA | -11.7 |
| 113 | Florida Atlantic | American | -11.9 |
| 114 | Georgia State | Sun Belt | -12.1 |
| 115 | Arkansas State | Sun Belt | -12.6 |
| 116 | Charlotte | American | -12.9 |
| 117 | Sam Houston State | C-USA | -13.1 |
| 118 | Air Force | Mountain West | -13.4 |
| 119 | UTEP | C-USA | -13.5 |
| 120 | Eastern Michigan | MAC | -13.8 |
| 121 | Akron | MAC | -13.9 |
| 122 | Nevada | Mountain West | -14.0 |
| 123 | Western Kentucky | C-USA | -14.3 |
| 124 | Utah State | Mountain West | -14.4 |
| 125 | UAB | American | -14.4 |
| 126 | Temple | American | -14.9 |
| 127 | Tulsa | American | -15.3 |
| 128 | Southern Miss | Sun Belt | -15.5 |
| 129 | Middle Tennessee | C-USA | -15.6 |
| 130 | Missouri State | C-USA | -17.9 |
| 131 | UMass | MAC | -18.1 |
| 132 | New Mexico | Mountain West | -19.7 |
| 133 | New Mexico State | C-USA | -19.7 |
| 134 | Ball State | MAC | -19.9 |
| 135 | Kent State | MAC | -24.1 |
| 136 | Kennesaw State | C-USA | -25.4 |
Trying to make your own CFB rankings is a lot more difficult than it was 10 years ago despite the relative proliferation of data in the sport. Most of that data is in silos now, where you would have to pay more money than one could possibly justify spending to get the same thing you got a decade ago for free. Nevertheless, I didn’t just want to write down ESPN or TeamRankings ratings for my preview (that I didn't get to actually publish) so I decided to bring my own KateRate system out of retirement.
Well, something like my old system.
KateRate, at least in the first iteration of my preseason rankings, was a multiple regression model which used a combination of returning starters, recruiting rankings, yards per play margin, and a team’s Simple Rating System (SRS, and yes, I know the dolls are gonna love that one) rating from sports-reference to output a certain point value for each team.
My system was very accurate – I even managed to beat ESPN’s FPI and Bill Connelly’s SP+ in the first few weeks of the year – but the last year I ran it was 2020 and other things in my life have happened since. Plus, college football has changed so much since then that it is practically unrecognizable. So, a few liberties need to be taken for KateRate 2.0, and I will justify all of them. It is still the same basic model that was pretty accurate under the hood, though, so I feel as confident as I can given the circumstance.
Transfers have to be dealt with in a way that feels normal, the main problem being that they are enormously impactful to a team while we also don’t have a whole ton of data on this era where everyone is up for grabs. Therefore, in order to beat statistics over the head, I’m going to do a shortcut and use Z-scores (or normalized scores) for transfer classes and then add them in with the initial calculations under the assumption that a third of the transfer class will be new starters. This is a conservative middle ground from a couple of different sources, those being a 2023 ESPN article that showed 25 percent of all FBS teams were transfers, while over 50 percent of starting quarterbacks were. Additionally, there was an article by The Athletic that showed 40 percent of all-conference players were transfers at one point or another. Granted, this is less statistically rigorous, but I think it’s an acceptable compromise until we have more than two or three years of data.
To complicate matters just that tiny bit more, a study from the University of Indiana shows that a high amount of incoming transfers won't inherently make your team better unless you’re already bad. In other words, a lot of transfers may not make you a winner if you’re at the top, but at the bottom, it can significantly increase your floor. Taking this into account, there’s a limiting function set up where teams that are worse and import better talent get a higher boost than teams better up the chart who already were talented to begin with. This uses the 2024 SRS values and a team’s transfer class points from 24/7 to get a “transfer score”. That score is standardized and then added on or subtracted from a team’s initial rating.
This may seem a bit unfair, but it makes sense; it’s rare that a transfer is a definite value added on an already good team, but it is more than logical to think a transfer on a bad team will absolutely be a quick jolt of quality that the team didn’t have beforehand. Florida State, for example, is going to benefit a lot more from a four star transfer coming in this year than, say, Alabama would, because Florida State was terrible last year and Alabama wasn’t. That's why despite their 2-10 record from last year, the 'Noles are a top 40 team this year in KateRate.
For transfers away, I've also had to take a few liberties there. When I first came up with KateRate in 2016-17, having a team's four-year recruiting average performed better than the two year average. This kind of hit at Bud Elliott's concept of blue chip ratio, where there's an inherent amount of talent each school has that can't really be factored in with just last year's performance. Teams that perform better in recruiting will find their "true north" at some point, whereas schools that don't generally won't. Of course, there were exceptions to this rule – Wisconsin and Kansas State always were contenders even though they could barely budge the top 25 most years in recruiting.
Yet, because of those transfers, a lot of talent that could be on a team just isn't anymore. It doesn't make much sense, for example, to factor very much in Alabama's 2022 recruiting class in a possible 2025 index of performance when only three of 25 enrollees from that class are still on the team. Yet, I don't like making too many assumptions in a model that's not been rigorously backtested. Still, I am going to make at least an educated assumption that the same amount of transfers incoming are also outgoing for all teams. For inherent talent, I've assumed 100 percent of recruits from this year are still on the team, 85 percent of recruits from last year are still on the team, 70 percent of recruits from two years ago are still on the team, and 55 percent of recruits from three years ago are still on that team. This is exceptionally conservative given some of the preliminary data I've been gathering, but it also provides a meta-rating on a program's ability to bring in talent, which can say something about the talent still on the roster as well as any incoming transfer quality.
For the last piece of information that my model was tested on, I needed returning starters from last year. Unfortunately, this is kind of a pain in the ass to find for all 136 FBS schools. Sure, I could just use Bill C's returning production metric, but that feels a bit like cheating (and also I’m too cheap to pay for ESPN+). Plus, my model was made in the era before that was a widely used metric, so it will function best with returning starter data.
Usually, I'd use Phil Steele's spring guide for my numbers. However, this year, I dove into it, and his numbers felt so off that I wonder if he’d actually copied last year’s numbers over to his spring guide for this year. In light of that, I used the Power Four returning starters metric from TruMedia that has been posted in a number of places, assorted media reports for the G5 teams, and, if need be, my own calculations for any of those gaps that either of the two sources could not fill in – this was about 40 of the 136 teams in total. I cannot say my numbers will be 100 percent accurate, but I can say that they match up well with Connelly’s returning production data. There may be a returning starter or two who I missed, but the numbers are roughly accurate to the best of my knowledge and ability.
Finally, I’ve added a bit of a fudge factor of five points (or roughly half a standard deviation) in either direction based on betting markets and my own personal thoughts on whether a team is better or worse than their initial rating might indicate. While I can’t say this is empirical, I can say that there are certain particularities of sports that mean the intangibles have to be made tangible. A team lost its coordinator? Well that’s going to hurt, of course, but how good was he? To some extent, this is a lot of biases jammed together. Thankfully, if you’re an economist, you can simply say ceteris paribus (make sure to include the italics so people know it’s Latin and fancy) or “wisdom of the markets” and that makes it rigorous again.
However, unlike betting on politics, which is both stupid and has no accessible information about the result itself, there is direct information about the result of the game taking place on the field in these markets, as diluted as that information might be. They could be injuries, team chemistry, any number of factors you can possibly think of. So, they’re important to at least take a look at.
I have gone from Power Four in alphabetical order to the Group of Five conferences in alphabetical order. The Pac-12 and independent teams will be listed before those schools.
Because I know people do care about this sort of thing, here's the average of each conference's ratings before the conference-sorted ratings.
| Rank | Conference | Avg. Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | SEC | 14.3 |
| 2 | Big Ten | 9.4 |
| 3 | ACC | 7.0 |
| 4 | Big XII | 6.6 |
| 5 | Pac-2 | -4.6 |
| 6 | Sun Belt | -7.8 |
| 7 | American | -8.0 |
| 8 | Mountain West | -8.3 |
| 9 | MAC | -10.8 |
| 10 | C-USA | -14.0 |
I think seeing the SEC that high after last year would make a few people question the validity of the entire system. That being said, this tends to match up with both where the computers were last year as well as the few preseason ratings I've seen this year. It's not that the Big Ten is bad, it's just that where the SEC seems to excel is in the bottom two-thirds of the league. This is due to a few things, but most of it comes down to that part of the SEC generally being much better at getting recruits than their Big Ten counterparts, and that's mostly due to geography, as Southern states still have the best high school players.
This is also apparent when you see the Sun Belt's relative ranking compared with the other mid-major conferences. Only the Pac-2 is better, and that's mostly due to Washington State and Oregon State still having some effects from being in a power conference previously.
For a little bit of fun and for comparison, the 2026 version of the Pac-12 would have an average of -4.9, which would make it the best mid-major league by a good margin. It does surprise me that their average rating would drop from this season even when taking Boise State into the conference, but it's also because the other football additions are in a relative downturn at the moment. Still, it places them right smack in the "tweener" spot that the American had before their recent round of departures.
ACC
| Rank | School | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Clemson | 23.2 |
| 2 | Miami (FL) | 16.7 |
| 3 | Louisville | 10.7 |
| 4 | Pitt | 9.6 |
| 5 | Georgia Tech | 9.5 |
| 6 | SMU | 9.5 |
| 7 | North Carolina | 9.1 |
| 8 | Florida State | 8.9 |
| 9 | Boston College | 6.0 |
| 10 | Duke | 5.7 |
| 11 | Virginia Tech | 5.6 |
| 12 | North Carolina State | 3.8 |
| 13 | Syracuse | 3.1 |
| 14 | Virginia | 2.1 |
| 15 | Cal | 1.3 |
| 16 | Stanford | -2.6 |
| 17 | Wake Forest | -2.8 |
Big Ten
| Rank | School | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Penn State | 26.2 |
| 2 | Ohio State | 23.4 |
| 3 | Michigan | 16.9 |
| 4 | Oregon | 15.0 |
| 5 | Illinois | 14.4 |
| 6 | Indiana | 13.2 |
| 7 | USC | 11.4 |
| 8 | Nebraska | 10.6 |
| 9 | Iowa | 9.0 |
| 10 | Wisconsin | 8.5 |
| 11 | Minnesota | 8.5 |
| 12 | Rutgers | 5.8 |
| 13 | Michigan State | 5.5 |
| 14 | Washington | 5.2 |
| 15 | UCLA | 3.8 |
| 16 | Maryland | 1.1 |
| 17 | Northwestern | -0.8 |
| 18 | Purdue | -8.1 |
Big XII
| Rank | School | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arizona State | 17.1 |
| 2 | Iowa State | 12.8 |
| 3 | Baylor | 11.9 |
| 4 | Kansas State | 11.6 |
| 5 | Texas Tech | 11.5 |
| 6 | Utah | 9.6 |
| 7 | TCU | 8.4 |
| 8 | BYU | 7.3 |
| 9 | Colorado | 6.8 |
| 10 | Houston | 4.8 |
| 11 | Cincinnati | 4.1 |
| 12 | Arizona | 2.8 |
| 13 | Kansas | 2.2 |
| 14 | UCF | 0.1 |
| 15 | West Virginia | -2.5 |
| 16 | Oklahoma State | -3.3 |
SEC
| Rank | School | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | 24.0 |
| 2 | Alabama | 22.7 |
| 3 | Georgia | 17.2 |
| 4 | Texas A&M | 17.2 |
| 5 | LSU | 16.3 |
| 6 | Missouri | 14.9 |
| 7 | Florida | 14.9 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | 14.6 |
| 9 | Auburn | 14.5 |
| 10 | South Carolina | 14.1 |
| 11 | Ole Miss | 13.7 |
| 12 | Tennessee | 12.8 |
| 13 | Arkansas | 10.0 |
| 14 | Vanderbilt | 8.7 |
| 15 | Kentucky | 8.1 |
| 16 | Mississippi State | 5.3 |
Independents and Pac-2
| Rank | School | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Notre Dame | 20.7 |
| 2 | Oregon State | -3.5 |
| 3 | UConn | -5.4 |
| 4 | Washington State | -5.7 |
American
| Rank | School | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Navy | 2.4 |
| 2 | South Florida | 0.5 |
| 3 | Tulane | -2.0 |
| 4 | Army | -3.8 |
| 5 | East Carolina | -5.2 |
| 6 | UTSA | -6.2 |
| 7 | North Texas | -8.3 |
| 8 | Memphis | -8.5 |
| 9 | Rice | -11.3 |
| 10 | Florida Atlantic | -11.9 |
| 11 | Charlotte | -12.9 |
| 12 | UAB | -14.4 |
| 13 | Temple | -14.9 |
| 14 | Tulsa | -15.3 |
C-USA
| Rank | School | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liberty | -5.3 |
| 2 | Louisiana Tech | -8.6 |
| 3 | Jacksonville State | -11.4 |
| 4 | FIU | -11.7 |
| 5 | Delaware | -11.7 |
| 6 | Sam Houston State | -13.1 |
| 7 | UTEP | -13.5 |
| 8 | Western Kentucky | -14.3 |
| 9 | Middle Tennessee | -15.6 |
| 10 | Missouri State | -17.9 |
| 11 | New Mexico State | -19.9 |
| 12 | Kennesaw State | -25.4 |
MAC
| Rank | School | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Buffalo | 2.0 |
| 2 | Toledo | -1.5 |
| 3 | Miami (OH) | -4.8 |
| 4 | Ohio | -5.6 |
| 5 | Bowling Green | -9.0 |
| 6 | Western Michigan | -9.5 |
| 7 | Central Michigan | -10.9 |
| 8 | Northern Illinois | -11.0 |
| 9 | Eastern Michigan | -13.8 |
| 10 | Akron | -13.9 |
| 11 | UMass | -18.1 |
| 12 | Ball State | -19.9 |
| 13 | Kent State | -24.1 |
Mountain West
| Rank | School | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boise State | 11.0 |
| 2 | San Diego State | -4.6 |
| 3 | San Jose State | -5.2 |
| 4 | Hawai'i | -5.9 |
| 5 | UNLV | -6.2 |
| 6 | Colorado State | -8.1 |
| 7 | Fresno State | -8.7 |
| 8 | Wyoming | -10.3 |
| 9 | Air Force | -13.4 |
| 10 | Nevada | -14.0 |
| 11 | Utah State | -14.4 |
| 12 | New Mexico | -19.9 |
Sun Belt
| Rank | School | Division | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia Southern | East | -2.5 |
| 2 | South Alabama | West | -3.6 |
| 3 | James Madison | East | -4.5 |
| 4 | Louisiana | West | -5.1 |
| 5 | Texas State | West | -5.2 |
| 6 | Troy | West | -5.3 |
| 7 | Coastal Carolina | East | -6.3 |
| 8 | Old Dominion | East | -7.1 |
| 9 | Appalachian State | East | -8.8 |
| 10 | Marshall | East | -9.9 |
| 11 | Louisiana-Monroe | West | -10.2 |
| 12 | Georgia State | East | -12.1 |
| 13 | Arkansas State | West | -12.6 |
| 14 | Southern Miss | West | -15.6 |