What is Nebraska’s value if every conference started from scratch?

What is the Husker’s conference value compared to the other Big Ten teams?

Starting in 2023, there will be 69 schools that will be part of what is now known as the Power 5 (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 & SEC). Not only are new schools joining Power 5 conferences but as we’re all aware longtime Power 5 programs are jumping ship and leaving one league for another. Conference realignment had always been a slow drip, but with the announcement in late June when USC and UCLA said they would end their longtime affiliation with the Pac-12 and would officially join the Big Ten in 2024. That slow drip has broken open the floodgates, and now it’s a mad dash among 37 teams not in the Big Ten or SEC to ensure they don’t get left behind.

What if conference realignment went differently? What if college sports blew up every conference and started entirely from scratch instead of using existing leagues? What would the desirability for each school be regardless of the previous affiliation? Where would Nebraska find itself in the new college landscape? Sports Illustrated created a Power 5 Desirability Rating to try and determine each school’s value to their respective conference. Five metrics were used to analyze how desired each school would be if a top-to-bottom realignment occurred.

The categories:

  • Football ranking: Five-year average of Sagarin ratings
  • Academic ranking: Most recent U.S. News & World Report’s national universities rankings
  • All-sports ranking: Learfield Directors’ Cup Division I standings for last year
  • Football attendance: Average home-game attendance from 2017 to 2021
  • Broadcast viewership: Total number of football games that drew one million or more viewers from 2017 to 2021. Leaving 2020 out due to a disparity in the number of games each team played.

Below are the rankings of each Big Ten school, but we’ve also added future newcomers USC and UCLA to give an idea of the value they will bring to the Big Ten.