The college football season is in full swing and the picture for this year’s College Football Playoff is still as jumbled as it was in February. But there’s one question we can answer: Which team is the most valuable?

That would be Ohio State, which has surged to a $1.5 billion valuation, according to an analysis by Ryan Brewer, an associate professor of finance at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus. That’s a 59.6% increase in value for a program that was already worth the most nationally according to the study,...