The Top 10 Division I College Football Programs of the Late ’10s

After 24 weeks of our Super Squad Series counting down 23 best-in-conference and one best independent college football program over the last three seasons, we’ve finally come down to it:

These are our Top 10 Division I College Football Programs since Fall of 2017!

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First, “How are these ranked?” one could ask.

Championships? Win/Loss? Schedule Difficulty? Ranking Average?

Nay. None of the above. Yet in some ways, all of the above.

Super Squad Rating

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In short, we calculated a new score for how known or memorable we believe each program deserves to be, for their performance over this period.

We crunched these values using our final power rankings for the 2017-18, 2018-19, and 2019-20 seasons, incorporating both our 1-256 Ranking and 0-100 Power values in a way that gives more power-averaging weight to teams with closer to a #1 ranking each season. This means we favored a team finishing #1, #4, #7 over a team with three #3 finishes. Amplitude beat average here, essentially.

While the SSR is a somewhat abstract proprietary number, we believe it’s best to think of your team’s Super Squad Rating as the % of the American public who should be able to name an active player or coach in the program during this time.

We’ve set this up the way we have because the American consumer’s attention is fickle, and notoriety does not scale proportionately with performance.

National attention from media, prospects, alumni, boosters, fans, etc – like so many other loosely-quantifiable key resources in the physical world – follows a strong pareto distribution model across college football’s teams.

In laymen terms – the Top Dawgs get all the love each year, and everyone else is reduced to attention-scraps. We built our model to match this; leaving other opinions and biases at the door, and we’re happy with the results.

Without further ado…

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#10 Auburn Tigers

23.0 SSR

Bowl Appearances: 3
Bowl Titles: 1

Conference Championship Games: 1
Conference Titles: 0

Playoff Appearances: 0
National Titles: 0

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#9 Penn State Nittany Lions

23.5 SSR

Bowl Appearances: 3
Bowl Titles: 2

Conference Championship Games: 0
Conference Titles: 0

Playoff Appearances: 0
National Titles: 0

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#8 North Dakota State University Bison

24.1 SSR

Bowl Appearances: 0
Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Championship Games: 3
Conference Titles: 3

Playoff Appearances: 3
National Titles: 3 (FCS)

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#7 LSU Tigers

30.8 SSR

Bowl Appearances: 2
Bowl Titles: 1

Conference Championship Games: 1
Conference Titles: 1

Playoff Appearances: 1
National Titles: 1

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#6 Notre Dame Fighting Irish

32.1 SSR

Bowl Appearances: 2
Bowl Titles: 2

Conference Championship Games: 1
Conference Titles: 0

Playoff Appearances: 1
National Titles: 0

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#5 Oklahoma Sooners

37.3 SSR

Bowl Appearances: 0
Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Championship Games: 3
Conference Titles: 3

Playoff Appearances: 3
National Titles: 0

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#4 Ohio State Buckeyes

45.3 SSR

Bowl Appearances: 2
Bowl Titles: 2

Conference Championship Games: 3
Conference Titles: 3

Playoff Appearances: 1
National Titles: 0

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#3 Georgia Bulldogs

47.4 SSR

Bowl Appearances: 2
Bowl Titles: 1

Conference Championship Games: 3
Conference Titles: 1

Playoff Appearances: 1
National Titles: 0

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#2 Alabama Crimson Tide

56.9 SSR

Bowl Appearances: 1
Bowl Titles: 1

Conference Championship Games: 1
Conference Titles: 1

Playoff Appearances: 2
National Titles: 1

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#1 Clemson Tigers

77.8 SSR

Bowl Appearances: 0
Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Championship Games: 3
Conference Titles: 3

Playoff Appearances: 3
National Titles: 1

CONGRATULATIONS Amari Rodgers, Tee Higgins, Chase Brice, A.J. Terrell, Travis Etienne, Brian Dawkins Jr., Baylon Spector, Isaiah Simmons, K’Von Wallace, Diondre Overton, Denzel Johnson, Cornell Powell, T.J. Chase, Tanner Muse, LeAnthony Williams, Darien Rencher, Xavier Kelly, Will Swinney, Nolan Turner, J.C. Chalk, Sylvester Mayers, Justin Foster, Chad Smith, Nyles Pinckney, Josh Jackson, Peter Cote, James Skalski, Will Spiers, Landon Holden, Regan Upshaw, Logan Rudolph, Luke Price, Patrick Phibbs, Gage Cervenka, Jordan Williams, Cade Stewart, Matt Bockhorst, Jack Maddox, Blake Vinson, Tremayne Anchrum, John Simpson, Sean Pollard, Chandler Reeves, Will Brown, Carter Groomes, Jacob Edwards, James Edwards.

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Final Super Squad Rankings

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