Here's their methodology for quantifying brand strength:
To tailor this question to college football brands, we have asked 1,000 high school football players the simple question: “If you were the #1 recruit in the nation with offers from every program, how likely (1-10 scale) is it that you would choose [program]?”
There's absolutely no way a #1 overall recruit in the nation ever considers a non P-5 school. The fact that we were on the chart at all — and I don't see our fellow newcomers (UCF, Cincy, Houston) on there — says we have a teensy bit of pull. I think it will be a phenomenal win if we approach the middle of the bell curve on that question. Right now, the fact that Cormani is even teasing us is newsworthy.
This article is put together by the same guys who want to run a service to augment your brand, and so their chief motivation is to manufacture alarm.