Sports Illustrated Ranks Virginia's Conference Value

Pat Forde broke down the "desirability" of every Power Five school in terms of the value they would bring to a new conference

Courtesy of Matt Riley/Virginia Athletics

Conference realignment has taken over the college football world this summer. In response to the SEC acquiring Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12 beginning in 2025, the Big Ten made a move to bring in USC and UCLA from the Pac-12 starting in 2024. 

Although both conferences are supposedly content to stick at 16 teams with their respective new members, it is likely that college football, and therefore, college athletics, is headed towards having two massive superconferences. Whether a school makes it into one of those all-powerful superconferences when the dust settles will essentially determine if that school's athletic department will survive the new age of collegiate athletics. 

With that in mind, Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde released "Desirability Ratings" for each school, measuring the conference value of each Power Five school based on five factors: 

• Football ranking: "a five-year average of the Sagarin ratings from 2017 to '21, using only the current and future Power 5 schools"
• Academic ranking: "the most recent U.S. New & World Report's national universities rankings, released in 2021"
• All-sports ranking: "the Learfield Directors' Cup Division I standings for the 2021-2022 academic year, which rates performance in 19 sports"
• Football attendance: "an average of home-game attendance from 2017 to '21, tossing out '20 since that season was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic"
• Broadcast viewership: "total number of football games that drew one million or more viewers from 2017 to '21"

Forde uses these metrics to rank the desirability of each Power Five school. See the full rankings and his analysis here: Desirability Ratings: Measuring Each Power 5 School’s Conference Value

With all the metrics put together, Virginia ranked 32nd overall out of 69 rated Power Five schools. UVA is tied for 48th in football, 9th in academics, 11th in all sports, 51st in attendance, and 52nd in viewership. Virginia ranks higher than eight ACC schools: Virginia Tech (35), Pittsburgh (46), Wake Forest (47), Duke (50), Georgia Tech (54), Louisville (T55), Syracuse (60), and Boston College (62).  

The average school ranking for each Power 5 conference, using future membership (after USC and UCLA join the Big Ten and Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC): SEC 25.1, Big Ten 25.8, ACC 39.6, Pac-12 41.4, Big 12 49.3.

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