With the college football season kicking off this weekend, we look at how the balance of power is shifting within the sport.
Sports Poll™ has tracked the popularity of favorite college football teams for more than 25 years. In addition to comparing the favorite individual teams, Sports Poll™ also rolls up the member schools to show the strength of each conference. The Big Ten and SEC have consistently ranked as the two favorites over the past 25 years, but the gap over other conferences has widened during the last decade.
In 2024, the SEC added Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12. The Big Ten added Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington from the Pac-12. Other conferences have responded with changes of their own, but the net impact has been greatest for the Big Ten and SEC. Although each of the Power Four conferences (ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC) receive automatic bids to the College Football Playoff, the shift has essentially created a “Power Two” where the Big Ten and SEC account for 45% of all favorite teams in college football today, up from 33% at the turn of the century. It’s safe to say college football has changed more than any other major American sport this century, and we will be digging deeper into the sport’s evolution more often over the next few months.
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Sports Poll by SSRS™ is conducted continuously throughout the year and includes a nationally representative sample of more than 24,000 Americans each year.
