The Nebraska football team has brought plenty of frustrations to fans over the years. However, especially this year, the Huskers have brought the fans a ton of joy in several other sports. In men's basketball, the program got its first-ever NCAA Tournament win and ran to the Sweet 16. In women's basketball, the squad continued a streak of March Madness appearances.
The baseball team hosted a regional for the first time in over a decade, and the softball team made the Women's College World Series. Add in that the Huskers volleyball team went deep into the NCAA Tournament after winning the Big Ten, and it was a very successful season. Even the football team went to its second straight bowl game after years of consecutive losing seasons. That's why the Cornhuskers ranked surprisingly high in CBS Sports' ranking of all 68 Power Four schools from the 2025-26 seasons.
Cody Nagel compiled the rankings using advanced metrics. "Each school received a score in six sports: football, men's basketball, women's basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball," Nagel wrote. "Each sport was scored using the following formula: (0.3 × (regular-season win percentage × 100)) + (0.7 × postseason score). That means 30% of a team's score came from regular-season success, while 70% came from postseason performance."
Nagel added that conference tournament results didn't factor in because they varied too much. Obviously, for Notre Dame football, those variations would include not getting credit for a conference title no matter how many games they won, so that's a plus.
Nebraska athletics ranks fifth in CBS Sports’ Power Four all-sports standings
CBS Sports then added up all the postseason accomplishments with the following scores:
- Bowl eligible/NCAA Tournament appearance -- 20 points
- Bowl win/Round of 32/Regional Finals -- 30 points
- CFP appearance/Sweet 16/Super Regionals -- 45 points
- CFP quarterfinals/Elite Eight/CWS -- 60 points
- CFP semifinals/Final Four/CWS semifinals -- 75 points
- National runner-up -- 90 points
- National champion -- 100 points
Putting all of these metrics together, the Nebraska Cornhuskers ranked as the fifth-best athletic program in the country. These standings are slightly different than the Governor's Cup, which recently showed NU finished 19th. Because this doesn't account for sports like Tennis and Track and Field, the Huskers finished in a different spot.
By these rankings, the only teams Troy Dannen's programs trailed were Texas (66.73), Alabama(53.27), Michigan (50.09), and Texas A&M (49.80). Since NU scored a 49.58 for the year, they came very, very close to being even higher, only distantly trailing Texas and Alabama.
With the football and basketball seasons coming in the next few months, Nebraska can try to score even higher for the 2026-27 seasons.
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