If Power 5 conferences started from scratch tomorrow, how desirable would the Iowa Hawkeyes and the rest of the Big Ten’s league members be? That’s precisely what Sports Illustrated set out to determine in their desirability ratings.
In order to compile their full Power 5 desirability ratings, there was a set of five categories used to rank the programs: football ranking, academic ranking, all-sports ranking, football attendance, and broadcast viewership.
For the football ranking, SI used the five-year average Sagarin ratings for each Power 5 team from 2017-21. Academic rankings were listed according to the U.S. News & World Report’s national universities rankings.
The all-sports ranking was according to the Division I standings for the 2021-22 academic year in the Learfield Directors’ Cup which rates performance in 19 sports. Football attendance rankings were based on average home-game attendance (minus the 2020 season) from 2017-21.
Finally, broadcast viewership was based on the total number of football games for each program that drew one million or more viewers from 2017-21. Again, that list excluded the 2020 season due to COVID-19 skewing the results.
From worst-to-first, here’s how each of the Big Ten schools ranked in SI’s desirability ratings based on those five categories among the now 69 Power 5 programs.