Big 30 Football Power Index 2026

Each team starts from a verified baseline built on its previous season, with scoring margin capped at ±28 so a blowout cannot run away with the scale. Once a team plays, each result is rated 50 + margin + 0.35 × (opponent rating − 50) with a road/home adjustment, and the season seed is carried as 3 virtual games so a rating settles instead of swinging on one night. The Big 30 spans three governing bodies — PIAA District 9, Section VI and Section V — which seed by three different methods and share no common number. This is the one scale that covers all 18.

Pennsylvania opens a week before New York, so Week 1 is Pennsylvania only. Weeks are counted from the Monday of Pennsylvania’s opening week. Scrimmages are listed under Preseason. Previews and projections both publish in a game's own week only, because a write‑up and a margin built four weeks out rest on games nobody has played; the Matchup Calculator will still price any pairing you want to look ahead to, and every projection carries a 1.5‑point home adjustment. Opponents from outside the Big 30 are marked NON‑B30 and are rated on the same scale from their own results — they are never ranked against the Big 30 field. Games are listed once, matched on date and opponent rather than on week number, because the two states do not number the week the same way. Projections are model output, not predictions of fact.

These programs' baselines come from national and sectional aggregators rather than the game‑by‑game verification behind the Big 30 baselines, so treat them as a tier lower. A dagger marks one where sources disagreed or a total had to be reconstructed; the detail is on file. Where a program is a co‑op, the co‑op is treated as one team.