Every year, the top college football teams rake in millions of dollars through lucrative bowl game appearances. But while these contests significantly raise a school’s profile and give national attention to a few superstar athletes, only about half of those playing in the games will actually leave school with a degree.

There is, however, some variability among the academic performance of the top gridiron squads. Pennsylvania State University, for example, graduates 80 percent of its football players, and its black players graduate at a higher rate than those at the institution overall. At the opposite end, the University of Texas at Austin’s football team has a dismal 41 percent graduation rate and just over one in four of its black players earn a degree. That’s a shameful classroom performance.

In order to gauge the academic performance of the nation’s top college football squads, my former colleague at the New America Foundation Lindsey Luebchow and I have put together Higher Ed Watch’s third annual Academic Bowl Championship Series, a ranking of the top 25 teams based upon readily available federal and NCAA measures of academic quality.

Here’s what we found:

So who would be contending for the crystal trophy in Pasadena, Calif., if the match-up was determined by academic performance? They may not be playing for the title, but Penn State and Stanford are the class of the BCS, according to Higher Ed Watch’s rankings of the top 25 college football teams.

With two-time champion Boston College dropping out of the rankings this year, Penn State’s Nittany Lions moved up from sharing the number two spot in last year’s ranking to take over the top spot. The Stanford Cardinal, which is making its Academic BCS debut thanks to an 8-4 season, takes the second spot as the only other squad to receive more than 100 points under Higher Ed Watch’s calculation. These two teams are followed by Cincinnati (number four last year) and Boise State (eighth).

For more on who is coming up short in the classroom and the methodology used, go ahead and read the whole thing.