CBS Sports ranks all 68 Power Four schools by “best year” across the 2025-26 college sports seasons

CBS Sports published a Power Four-wide ranking that aims to answer a common offseason debate, which college athletics program actually enjoyed the best year across the biggest stages. Instead of focusing on a single sport, the exercise ranks all 68 Power Four schools by combining performance across major sports during the 2025-26 seasons.

The core premise is straightforward: fan bases often believe their own program had a standout year, but CBS Sports built a simple formula to determine which schools performed best when you consider multiple sports at once. The ranking is not limited to football, even though the story is published in the college football section. It is designed to compare athletic departments as multi-sport brands, using outcomes from major events rather than reputation or single-sport highlights.

By covering all 68 Power Four programs, the list also turns the usual year-end exercise into a broader measuring stick for consistency. Schools that reach late rounds in postseason play across several sports, or that perform strongly during championship windows, can benefit in a way that a one-sport success story cannot. The underlying method is meant to reflect “biggest stages” results, which shifts the emphasis away from regular-season-only success toward accomplishments that tend to matter most in the sport-specific postseason ecosystems.

For college athletics followers, the practical value of the ranking is less about debating the exact winner and more about how it frames what counts as a great athletic year. It highlights the difference between a banner season in one sport versus sustained competitiveness across the athletic department. It also provides a benchmark to compare programs that may not dominate in football but can still perform at an elite level in other NCAA sports during the same cycle.

There are, however, clear caveats with any cross-sport ranking. Even when a methodology is “simple,” it requires choices about which sports carry the most weight, how postseason results are translated into points, and what is treated as the comparable equivalent of a “big stage” across different sports. Without access to additional detail beyond CBS Sports’ explanation in the published piece, it is best to treat the ranking as an informed comparative exercise rather than an official measure of athletic department performance.

Looking ahead, the conversation this kind of ranking sparks is likely to carry into summer and fall programming, especially as teams separate into rebuilding years and contention windows. If the ranking underscores multi-sport strength for a particular program, it can influence how fans and recruits interpret the athletic department’s momentum heading into the next cycle. The next step for readers is to compare the ranking’s top outcomes with what those schools prioritize next, from recruiting emphasis by sport to maintaining facilities and support systems that feed postseason-level performance.