The National Association of College Directors of Athletics (NACDA) has been ranking athletic programs for years with Stanford winning the last 19 trophies. The NACDA ranking weighs every sport equally, meaning a football national title is worth the same number of points (100) as a women’s water polo title. But the CBSSports.com Best in College Sports Award is more reflective of those sports that generate the broadest base of fan and media interest. We rated five sports — football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball and a “wild card” sport.
For our formula — which takes into account only schools that field FBS football programs — we weighed football three times as much, while men’s basketball is worth twice as many points as the other sports that are part of the formula.
