All sixteen SEC lead running backs, scored on four published components: Performance at 35%, NIL Visibility at 20%, Social Power at 20%, Fan Demand at 25%.
Kewan Lacy has 191 yards, 88th in the country. He is first here at 54.1, the highest score on any Power 4 running back board, and 12.3 clear of Jadan Baugh, whose 458 yards are second in the country. The two meet on Saturday. Not one of these sixteen backs has been fueled by a single fan.
The 2026 SEC running back NIL board
| # | Running back | School | Record | NIL Index | Perf | Vis | Social | Fan | Rush yds | TD | Nat’l rush rank |
| 1 | Kewan Lacy | Ole Miss | 3-0 (1-0) | 54.1 | 52 | 92 | 81 | 5 | 191 | 4 | 88 |
| 2 | Jadan Baugh | Florida | 3-0 (1-0) | 41.8 | 44 | 59 | 66 | 5 | 458 | 8 | 2 |
| 3 | Nate Frazier | Georgia | 3-0 (1-0) | 41.5 | 40 | 66 | 65 | 5 | 202 | 5 | 74 |
| 4 | DeSean Bishop | Tennessee | 3-0 (0-0) | 36.2 | 44 | 35 | 63 | 5 | 286 | 4 | 24 |
| 5 | Jeremiah Cobb | Auburn | 2-1 (0-1) | 35.8 | 38 | 50 | 56 | 5 | 170 | 2 | 113 |
| 6 | Sedrick Alexander | Vanderbilt | 3-0 (0-0) | 34.0 | 58 | 25 | 37 | 5 | 152 | 2 | 139 |
| 7 | Rueben Owens II | Texas A&M | 2-1 (0-1) | 33.8 | 30 | 57 | 60 | 0 | 186 | 1 | 96 |
| 8 | Hollywood Smothers | Texas | 3-0 (0-0) | 31.7 | 39 | 53 | 37 | 0 | 198 | 2 | 77 |
| 9 | Jamal Roberts | Missouri | 3-0 (0-0) | 31.3 | 27 | 51 | 58 | 0 | 300 | 3 | 19 |
| 10 | Dilin Jones | LSU | 2-1 (0-1) | 30.4 | 21 | 43 | 66 | 5 | 285 | 3 | 26 |
| 11 | Fluff Bothwell | Mississippi State | 3-0 (1-0) | 30.0 | 32 | 40 | 54 | 0 | 280 | 2 | 30 |
| 12 | Sutton Smith | Arkansas | 1-2 (0-1) | 27.8 | 29 | 38 | 50 | 0 | 66 | 1 | – |
| 13 | Matt Fuller | South Carolina | 2-1 (0-1) | 27.4 | 20 | 48 | 54 | 0 | 272 | 3 | 32 |
| 14 | Lloyd Avant | Oklahoma | 2-1 (0-0) | 27.2 | 26 | 39 | 52 | 0 | 141 | 1 | 160 |
| 15 | Jason Patterson | Kentucky | 2-1 (1-1) | 24.7 | 18 | 40 | 52 | 0 | 189 | 0 | 89 |
| 16 | Daniel Hill | Alabama | 3-0 (1-0) | 20.9 | 27 | 17 | 40 | 0 | 210 | 3 | 68 |
Each SEC school’s leading rusher at running back through the weekend of 19 September, ordered by NIL Index. Rushing figures and team records are ESPN’s, with conference records in parentheses; national rank is among every FBS ball carrier on ESPN’s rushing leaderboard. RallyFuel figures are live as of 22 September. Arkansas’s rushing lead is shared: Sutton Smith and Braylen Russell both have 66 yards. Smith has more carries (28 to 24) and holds the spot, and Russell’s profile publishes 7.0. Arkansas figures are from CBS Sports. The SEC quarterback board runs the same components.
| Component | Weight | What it measures |
| Performance | 35% | Stats, efficiency, team success |
| NIL Visibility | 20% | Estimated value, brands, exposure |
| Social Power | 20% | Followers, engagement, momentum |
| Fan Demand | 25% | RallyFuel searches, views, fuels |
1. 267 fewer yards, 12.3 points ahead
Lacy has 191 yards and four touchdowns for Ole Miss. Baugh has 458 and eight for Florida.
| Lacy over Baugh | Raw gap | Weighted |
| Performance | +8 | +2.80 |
| NIL Visibility | +33 | +6.60 |
| Social Power | +15 | +3.00 |
| Fan Demand | 0 | 0.00 |
Lacy leads in three columns and ties in the fourth. His Performance of 52 is eight points better than Baugh’s despite 267 fewer yards this season. His profile lists 1,567 rushing yards and 24 touchdowns, and that column counts more than three games.
His Visibility of 92 is the highest of any lead back in the Power 4, and on its own it is worth 6.6 points over Baugh. Even if Baugh matched Lacy’s Performance, he would still trail by more than nine points.
No. 4 Ole Miss visits No. 21 Florida on Saturday at 3:30 on ABC.
2. Two hundred fifty-six yards, three-tenths of a point
Baugh has 458 yards and eight touchdowns. Frazier has 202 and five. Here is everything that separates them.
| Baugh over Frazier | Raw gap | Weighted |
| Performance | +4 | +1.40 |
| NIL Visibility | -7 | -1.40 |
| Social Power | +1 | +0.20 |
| Fan Demand | 0 | 0.00 |
Baugh wins Performance by four points, worth 1.4 of composite. Frazier takes all 1.4 back in Visibility, where his 66 is second only to Lacy’s 92. Social Power is worth two-tenths, and Fan Demand is level at 5.
The rounded components give 0.2. The published gap is 0.3. Either way, the best rushing start in the SEC buys less than half a point.
3. Same Performance, 5.6 points apart
DeSean Bishop and Baugh share the conference’s third-best Performance component at 44, behind Sedrick Alexander’s 58 and Lacy’s 52. Bishop is the Knoxville kid playing for Tennessee, with 286 yards and four touchdowns.
| Baugh over Bishop | Raw gap | Weighted |
| Performance | 0 | 0.00 |
| NIL Visibility | +24 | +4.80 |
| Social Power | +3 | +0.60 |
| Fan Demand | 0 | 0.00 |
Football is level. Almost the whole gap is one column: Bishop’s Visibility of 35 ranks fourteenth of the sixteen SEC lead backs.
He gets the biggest stage in the conference this weekend. No. 1 Texas visits No. 14 Tennessee at noon on ABC, with Hollywood Smothers, eighth here, in the other backfield.
4. The column that decides running backs
On the SEC quarterback board, Fan Demand ran from 5 to 55 and was worth 12.5 points of separation. Here, every one of the sixteen backs sits at 0 or 5. The whole column is worth 1.25.
The weight moves to the two audience columns. Visibility spans 17 to 92 here, worth 15.0, the widest lever on the board. Social Power spans 37 to 81, worth 8.8. Performance spans 18 to 58, worth 14.0.
Vanderbilt’s Sedrick Alexander tops the Performance column at 58 with 152 yards, 139th in the country. A Visibility of 25 holds him to sixth at 34.0.
Dilin Jones and Smothers show the trade-off.
| Jones over Smothers | Raw gap | Weighted |
| Performance | -18 | -6.30 |
| NIL Visibility | -10 | -2.00 |
| Social Power | +29 | +5.80 |
| Fan Demand | +5 | +1.25 |
Jones has 87 more yards, 285 to 198, and a Performance component 18 points lower. Social Power, 66 to 37, wins back 5.8 of the 6.3 that costs him. He finishes 1.3 behind.
Lacy is the extreme case. His Visibility of 92 is worth 18.4 points by itself, about a third of his total.
5. Second and sixth in yards, ninth and thirteenth on the board
Jamal Roberts of Missouri has 300 yards, the second-most of any SEC lead back. Matt Fuller of South Carolina has 272, the sixth-most. They finish ninth and thirteenth.
Roberts’s Performance component is 27 and Fuller’s is 20, both in the bottom half of the conference. The yards they have piled up in three games have not reached that column yet, and neither has a point of Fan Demand. The quarterback and receiver boards showed the same pattern: production alone does not move this index.
Three calls for 2026
Kewan Lacy holds first all season. Currently 54.1, 12.3 clear. He leads the conference in Visibility and Social Power and is second in Performance.
Nate Frazier passes Baugh for second. Currently 41.5, three-tenths back. One step in Fan Demand from 5 to 15 is worth 2.5 points, eight times the gap. Georgia hosts Oklahoma on Saturday at 3:30 on ESPN.
Jadan Baugh finishes the regular season as the SEC’s leading rusher. He is 158 yards clear of the next lead back after three games. No. 4 Ole Miss visits No. 21 Florida on Saturday at 3:30 on ABC, with Kewan Lacy across the field.
We will grade all three in December.
A note on how these move
Every rushing figure above covers three games. Week 4 puts twelve of these sixteen backs on the same field as another name on this board:
- Texas at Tennessee: Smothers and Bishop
- Oklahoma at Georgia: Avant and Frazier
- Ole Miss at Florida: Lacy and Baugh
- South Carolina at Alabama: Fuller and Daniel Hill
- Texas A&M at LSU: Rueben Owens II and Jones
- Missouri at Mississippi State: Roberts and Fluff Bothwell
The Week 4 preview and the full conference schedule have the rest.
Treat it as a snapshot. Production changes slowly. Attention does not.
Frequently asked questions
Who leads the 2026 SEC RB NIL Index? Ole Miss running back Kewan Lacy, at 54.1 out of 100. Florida’s Jadan Baugh is second at 41.8 and Georgia’s Nate Frazier is third at 41.5.
How is the NIL Index calculated? It weights four components, each scored out of 100: Performance 35%, NIL Visibility 20%, Social Power 20% and Fan Demand 25%.
Why isn’t the SEC’s leading rusher first? Jadan Baugh has 458 yards, the most of any SEC lead back, but Kewan Lacy leads him in Performance, NIL Visibility and Social Power. Rushing yards are one input to Performance, which carries 35% of the index.
How can fans move the NIL Index? Fan Demand, worth 25%, comes from RallyFuel searches, profile views and fuels. It is the only component fans control directly.
Learn more about the NIL landscape
What a valuation actually measures is not what this index measures. On the SEC quarterback board, Fan Demand was the widest lever at 12.5 points. On this one it is the narrowest at 1.25, because no SEC running back has moved it past 5.
Sixteen lead backs have 3,586 rushing yards between them and zero fuels. Fan Demand is the one column the people reading this control directly. Sixteen fans have out-fueled entire fanbases.
Fueling an athlete is a purchase of conditional NIL engagement rights, not a donation. The terms and refund conditions are posted at checkout.
Explore the Athletes on RallyFuel, then check the hardware in the Trophy Case.
