Final 2025-2026 rankings of all 136 FBS football teams

We updated our rankings of the 136 FBS football teams through the end of the 2025-26 season. Unfortunately, the bowl games are not as competitive as they used to be, as many of the best players sit out those games to avoid getting injured before the NFL draft. Nevertheless, we considered the results of all bowl games. They are very helpful for our model to compare teams across conferences, as there are relatively few regular season games between the best teams from the best conferences.

The results presented below are for our second model, which adjusts for the game score and whether the game is a home, away, or neutral site game, but does not adjust for when the game occurred during the season. We think this model is the best model for ranking teams’ overall performance during the season. Our model again includes only games between FBS teams and does not include games between FBS and FCS teams. The other information in the table below also does not include those FBS vs. FCS games.

There are a few notable differences between our model and the final Associated Press rankings of the top 25 teams. Unlike the AP, our model ranks Oregon above Miami. Oregon’s only two losses were to undefeated Indiana. Miami lost a closer game to Indiana, but it also lost to Louisville and SMU, which each had 4 losses. Unlike the AP, our model ranks Oregon, Ohio St., and Georgia all ahead of Mississippi. Oregon and Ohio St. both have slightly better losses than Georgia and Mississippi. Georgia and Mississippi split their head-to-head games and Mississippi’s other loss to Miami is slightly better than Georgia’s loss to Alabama, but Georgia has two other wins against top 10 teams (Texas and Alabama) compared to Mississippi’s one Top 10 win against Oklahoma. Our model ranks Texas A&M and Notre Dame lower and Texas and Oklahoma higher than the AP. Texas beat Texas A&M, which beat Notre Dame, and those head-to-head matchups influence the ordering of those teams. Oklahoma ranks behind Texas because of a head-to-head loss, but ahead of Texas A&M despite having an additional loss, because it has four wins against top 25 teams compared to Texas A&M’s two.

Our model ranks Missouri and Iowa St. much higher and Virginia and James Madison much lower than the AP. The following table summarizes those teams’ wins and losses by our ranking. Missouri had only one loss to teams ranked outside the top 15 (a loss to Virginia), while Virginia’s three losses were all to teams ranked 47^th or lower. Iowa St. had three wins against top 35 teams compared to Virginia’s one. Missouri had three wins better than James Madison’s best win. Iowa State had four wins better than James Madison’s best win.

The largest upsets of the year by our rankings were San Jose St.’s win over New Mexico (88 places), Tulsa’s win over Army (84 places), UTSA’s win over Tulane (68 places), San Jose St.’s win over Hawaii (66 places), Oregon St.’s win over Washington St. (64 places), Syracuse’s win over Clemson (62 places), Colorado’s win over Iowa St. (60 places), Louisville’s win over Miami (55 places), Memphis’s win over South Florida (54 places), SMU’s win over Miami (53 places), and Florida St.’s win over Alabama (53 places).