Preseason polls measure what people think. Recruiting rankings measure what happened last December. The NIL Index measures something newer and, in 2026, arguably more useful: a program’s momentum in the market that now decides who stays on a roster.
Run the numbers for the SEC and the order barely resembles the standings.
The board
| Program | NIL Index | Rank | Perf | Vis | Social | First SEC game |
| Texas A&M | 28.2 | 1 | 33 | 39 | 45 | Sep 19 vs Kentucky |
| Ole Miss | 25.9 | 2 | 25 | 38 | 46 | Sep 19 vs LSU |
| Vanderbilt | 25.7 | 3 | 27 | 35 | 44 | Sep 26 at Auburn |
| Texas | 25.4 | 4 | 28 | 35 | 40 | Sep 26 at Tennessee |
| Oklahoma | 23.0 | 5 | 26 | 26 | 36 | Sep 26 at Georgia |
| LSU | 22.8 | 6 | 23 | 33 | 38 | Sep 19 at Ole Miss |
| Georgia | 22.3 | 7 | 29 | 27 | 32 | Sep 19 at Arkansas |
| Tennessee | 21.3 | 8 | 23 | 29 | 35 | Sep 26 vs Texas |
| Florida | 19.9 | 9 | 21 | 26 | 33 | Sep 19 at Auburn |
| South Carolina | 19.8 | 10 | 21 | 28 | 32 | Sep 19 vs Mississippi State |
| Kentucky | 19.4 | 11 | 20 | 28 | 33 | Sep 12 vs Alabama |
| Auburn | 18.7 | 12 | 23 | 22 | 29 | Sep 19 vs Florida |
| Missouri | 18.2 | 13 | 20 | 24 | 32 | Sep 26 at Mississippi State |
| Arkansas | 17.8 | 14 | 20 | 24 | 30 | Sep 19 vs Georgia |
| Alabama | 17.5 | 15 | 17 | 25 | 32 | Sep 12 at Kentucky |
| Mississippi State | 15.9 | 16 | 20 | 21 | 22 | Sep 19 at South Carolina |
Every score is out of 100. Read that rank column again: 1 through 16, unbroken. Sixteen SEC programs hold every single position in the national top 16. The last column is each program’s first conference game, where the board meets the field. Alabama and Kentucky open league play on September 12, three weeks before anyone else.
How to read the board
The composite is built from four weighted components, three of which are shown above.
Performance, 35 percent and the largest input, tracks on-field output: stats, efficiency and team success.
NIL visibility, 20 percent, tracks estimated deal value, brand partnerships and media exposure.
Social power, 20 percent, tracks follower counts, engagement rates and growth. Momentum counts, so a smaller account climbing fast outscores a larger one standing still.
Fan demand, 25 percent, tracks interest expressed on RallyFuel itself. It is the one component generated from platform data rather than public sources, and the only one a reader cannot verify from outside, so it sits outside the table above.
Two things follow. Because visibility and social power together account for 40 percent and both reward exposure, and no conference has more of it, an SEC sweep of the top sixteen is closer to a mechanical result than a surprise. And because performance is the heaviest public component at 35 percent, the programs that outrank their own standings are the ones worth looking at twice.
Texas A&M is number one and it isn’t close on the inputs
The Aggies lead the country at 28.2, and unlike most leaders on most boards, they got there without a weak spot. Performance 33, the best in the conference. Visibility 39, also the best. Social power 45, second only to Ole Miss.
The football backs it. Texas A&M put up 3,378 passing yards and 2,401 on the ground last season, scoring 439 against 273 allowed. Mario Craver caught 917 yards’ worth, Rueben Owens II ran for 639, Ashton Bethel-Roman added 503 through the air.
Third in the conference on the field. First in the country on momentum. Those are not the same measurement, and the gap between them is what this board exists to show.
The top is a coin flip
Texas A&M 28.2, Ole Miss 25.9, Vanderbilt 25.7, Texas 25.4. Four programs inside 2.8 points, holding the top four positions in the country.
That compression matters more than the order. On a board this tight, nobody climbs by winning one more game in October. They climb by moving a component, and the components are not equally hard to move.
Ole Miss is the case study. Social power 46, the highest figure of any program here, and visibility 38, second only to Texas A&M. The Rebels sit second in the country with a performance score of 25, below Georgia, Texas and Vanderbilt. They are not there because of the football. They are there because of the audience.
And then there’s Vanderbilt
The smallest athletic department in the conference sits third in the country at 25.7, two tenths behind Ole Miss and ahead of Oklahoma, LSU, Tennessee and Florida.
The performance score is the giveaway: 27, fourth on the board and ahead of every traditional power outside the top three. Vanderbilt scored 500 points last season against 297 allowed, with 3,738 passing and 2,282 rushing. Tre Richardson caught 806 yards’ worth and Junior Sherrill added 784.
Social power at 44 and visibility at 35 say the audience found it. Vanderbilt is the clearest evidence on this board that the index tracks momentum rather than inherited size, which is the entire argument for having an index in the first place.
Oklahoma’s shape is different
The Sooners post a performance score of 26 and the best point differential in the table, 341 scored against 201 allowed. On the field, that is a top-five profile.
Then visibility comes in at 26 and social power at 36, both trailing Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, Texas and LSU.
That is a program winning on the field and losing on the feed. In a market where retention is priced by attention, that gap is a roster problem rather than a vanity one, which is why the transfer portal belongs in every conversation about who is still playing in November.
Where the board and the standings disagree
On the field, last season’s SEC table finished with four teams tied at the top. Line that finish up against this year’s index and the two barely agree.
| Program | 2025 SEC finish | NIL Index rank | Gap |
| Ole Miss | 1st, 7-1 (13-2) | 2 | −1 |
| Georgia | 2nd, 7-1 (12-2) | 7 | −5 |
| Texas A&M | 3rd, 7-1 (11-2) | 1 | +2 |
| Alabama | 4th, 7-1 (11-4) | 15 | −11 |
| Oklahoma | 5th, 6-2 (10-3) | 5 | even |
Oklahoma is the only program where the two measurements land on the same number, and the index separates the four tied teams by fourteen places.
Worth noting that this particular tie cannot happen again. Last season ran on an eight-game conference schedule. 2026 is the first year every SEC school plays nine, so 7-1 is no longer a possible record, and the standings that decide the December 5 title game will be built differently from the ones above. The full 2026 SEC schedule shows how the nine games fall for each team.
Georgia is the cleanest illustration of the split. Second in the conference, seventh in the country on the index. The Bulldogs post the second-best performance score here at 29, behind only Texas A&M, but visibility at 27 and social power at 32 both trail programs that finished below them in the standings.
South Carolina runs the other direction. The Gamecocks went 4-8 and sit tenth nationally, essentially tied with Florida. LaNorris Sellers threw for 2,437 yards and Nyck Harbor put up 618 receiving on a team that lost eight games, and the program still lands in the national top ten for momentum. That is the shape you see when a roster’s attention is concentrated in one player.
Winning and momentum are not the same measurement. That is the point, not a flaw.
The board has a second layer
Drop from the program to the player and the picture changes shape.
Program momentum is an average, and averages flatten. A roster where attention is spread across a deep, balanced offense produces a very different internal picture from one where a single receiver or quarterback carries the brand, even when the two programs land within a point of each other on this table.
Texas A&M is the clearest case. Mario Craver caught 917 yards’ worth last season, Rueben Owens II ran for 639, Ashton Bethel-Roman added 503 through the air. Three productive starters, and their individual profiles are not evenly weighted in the way the single team score suggests.
The same holds at South Carolina, where LaNorris Sellers threw for 2,437 yards and Nyck Harbor caught 618 on a 4-8 team, and the pair are most of the reason the Gamecocks sit tenth nationally rather than somewhere in the twenties.
If you want to know where attention actually sits inside a program, the team number will not tell you. The rosters will.
So who wins the SEC?
If the season followed the index, Texas A&M takes it, with Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and Texas within a possession of them.
If it follows the standings, the four-way tie at 7-1 says Ole Miss, Georgia, Texas A&M and Alabama, with the tiebreakers doing the work.
The overlap is Texas A&M and Ole Miss, which is the closest thing to a consensus this conference produces. Everything else on the board is an argument, and the arguments are the reason to read it.
The season settles it either way. Week 1 picks are open now.
Dig into the numbers
- Make your picks — football predictions week by week, +20 points per pick
- Compare two programs — the School Rivalry tool stacks any two side by side, like Texas A&M against Ole Miss, the top two on this board
- See every game — the full 2026 SEC schedule, week by week
- See the whole league — the SEC hub has every school and every sport
- Back an athlete — every program above links to its verified roster
- Watch the movement — the Transfer Tracker follows who is entering and committing
- Learn the terms — the NIL Glossary covers the vocabulary behind the numbers
