What teams/conferences have the most fans? By the numbers

[brgRC90]

Going by current conference lineups, the Big Ten and the SEC are by far the most popular and both are set to get 4m+ more fans with realignment. Both the Big 12 and PAC 12 are set to fall below 10m. Ohio State is #1, Alabama #2, Penn State #3. One wonders how long Notre Dame can hold out:

Big Ten (26.6m): OSU (6.3m), PSU (4.0), MSU (2.9m), UM (2.9m), Illinois (1.7m), Wisconsin (1.6m), Minnesota (1.4m), Iowa (1.3m), Nebraska (1.2m), Maryland (.9m), Indiana (.8m), Purdue (.6m), Rutgers (.6m), Northwestern (.4m)

SEC (21.4m) : Alabama (4.1m), Georgia (2.8m), LSU (2.3m), Florida (2.1m), Auburn (2.0m), Texas A&M (2.0m), Kentucky (1.5m), Tennessee (1.3m), Missouri (1.1m), Arkansas (1.1m), Miss State (.5m), South Carolina (.4m), Mississippi (.1m), Vanderbilt (.1m)

Big 12 (10.1m): Texas (3.1m), Oklahoma (1.7m), Kansas (1.0m), WVU (.8m), Baylor (.8m), OSU (.8m), KSU (.7m), Iowa State (.7m), TT (.3m), TCU (.2m)

ACC (16.4m): FSU (2.8m), Duke (2.6m), UNC (1.9m), Boston College (1.5m), Georgia Tech (1.5m), Clemson (1.5m), Miami (1.1m), Syracuse (.9m), NC State (.7m), UVA (.6m), Pitt (.5m), Virginia Tech (.4m), Louisville (.3m), Wake Forest (.1m)

PAC 12 (11.8m): UCLA (2.7m), Arizona State (1.5m), USC (1.5m), Oregon (1.0m), Stanford (1.0m), Washington (.8m), Arizona (.8m), California (.8m), Oregon State (.7m), Utah (.4m), Washington State (.3m), Colorado (.3m)

Notre Dame 3.5m

 

[AdventureHasAName]

QUESTION: Where are you getting the numbers? Because they seem way off. There's no way Ohio State has 4x the fans as USC.

 

[AreYouNUTS]

QUESTION: Where are you getting the numbers? Because they seem way off. There's no way Ohio State has 4x the fans as USC.

Was just wondering the same thing.

 

[brgRC90]

QUESTION: Where are you getting the numbers? Because they seem way off. There's no way Ohio State has 4x the fans as USC.

Link was at the bottom but disappeared.

 

[MADHAT1]

Link was at the bottom but disappeared.

please re-post link

 

[Fighter of the Nightman]

Counting fans is very difficult … is my dad “an Illini fan”? He’s not an alumni, so he’s not on that list. He doesn’t have social media, so he doesn’t follow them on that. He literally never wears Illini gear, lol. And frankly, if we have 2 wins in late October and we’re playing Ohio State on one of the last nice days of the year, he’ll get a final bike ride in. 😎

However, Illinois is very proudly his favorite team, and he gets excited again every time we show a glimmer of hope. That’s how most fans are, we message board types are the crazy ones! And programs like OSU or Alabama have been so good for so long that they’ve converted a lot of casual fans into passionate ones!

Personally, I consider the casual college football fan in Jersey who’d answer a survey that his “favorite team” is Rutgers but he only watches when they’re at least competitive a “Rutgers fan.”

 

[brgRC90]

QUESTION: Where are you getting the numbers? Because they seem way off. There's no way Ohio State has 4x the fans as USC.

Consider that southern California has proven itself to not be as interested in football as you might think, at least at the NFL level. FWIW, on Twitter USC has 77.8k followers and Ohio State has 586k followers. On Instagram USC has 131k followers and Ohio State has 1m. In both cases that's much more than four times as much, about 8x.

 

[brgRC90]

please re-post link

There’s 1 college football team more popular than the Crimson Tide. Here’s who it is

The University of Alabama's football team, which has been dominant over the last decade-plus, is the second most popular team in the nation, and the single most popular among Gen Z fans, according to data from the Center for Sports Analytics at Samford University.

www.al.com

 

[retired711]

I bet you never heard of Samford University, a private university in Alabama. That's who developed these numbers. That probably explains why it's reported onnan Alabama newspaper's web site.

 

[Fighter of the Nightman]

Also, I wish there were just a truly high-budget model/survey on this! (I'm sure there is behind closed doors.)

All of these are so interesting but each incredibly flawed in one or two ways. Some teams have really active Twitter accounts but next-to-zero Instagram presence or something like that. Some teams have massive alumni bases but relatively few non-alum fans, while others are the opposite. Some are in tiny markets where a high percentage of the people are avid fans, while others are in huge markets that follow college sports less ... it's hard to reconcile where those numbers overlap.

Even that NYT map of Facebook likes by zip codes had some very obvious issues. For example, regardless of Facebook likes, there are not more Wisconsin fans than Minnesota fans on the MINNESOTA CAMPUS, lol. The first glaring error that jumps out at me here is that I do not believe for one second that there are more MSU fans than Michigan fans. Still, it's interesting, and all of these will probably have SOME directionally correct information!

 

[brgRC90]

Also, I wish there were just a truly high-budget model/survey on this! (I'm sure there is behind closed doors.)

All of these are so interesting but each incredibly flawed in one or two ways. Some teams have really active Twitter accounts but next-to-zero Instagram presence or something like that. Some teams have massive alumni bases but relatively few non-alum fans, while others are the opposite. Some are in tiny markets where a high percentage of the people are avid fans, while others are in huge markets that follow college sports less ... it's hard to reconcile where those numbers overlap.

Even that NYT map of Facebook likes by zip codes had some very obvious issues. For example, regardless of Facebook likes, there are not more Wisconsin fans than Minnesota fans on the MINNESOTA CAMPUS, lol. The first glaring error that jumps out at me here is that I do not believe for one second that there are more MSU fans than Michigan fans. Still, it's interesting, and all of these will probably have SOME directionally correct information!

The only fan base number I think is really in left field is Kansas with 1m. Terrible, terrible team from a small state. Very hard to believe. But you have to figure if the model is off for one fan base it's probably more or less equally off for all the others, so it's at least valuable to look at the relative popularity between teams--and conferences. There is little reason, for example, to believe that USC's fans are far less likely to use Twitter AND IG than Ohio State's so it stands to reason Ohio State is more popular. And, after all, Ohio State has been great every year for most of the last 20 years while it's been a long 13 years since Pete Carroll left USC, so it makes sense. In 2007 the numbers might've been different.

 

[Fighter of the Nightman]

The only fan base number I think is really in left field is Kansas with 1m. Terrible, terrible team from a small state. Very hard to believe. But you have to figure if the model is off for one fan base it's probably more or less equally off for all the others, so it's at least valuable to look at the relative popularity between teams--and conferences. There is little reason, for example, to believe that USC's fans are far less likely to use Twitter AND IG than Ohio State's so it stands to reason Ohio State is more popular. And, after all, Ohio State has been great every year for most of the last 20 years while it's been a long 13 years since Pete Carroll left USC, so it makes sense. In 2007 the numbers might've been different.

I'm actually doing this in Excel now, but a SUPER rudimentary way to adjust this in what I would consider to be a more correct direction would be to calculate two numbers and subtract each to get a new total for each team:

1) How many of these fans are for basketball only? I think it's obvious that the Duke and Kansas numbers, for example, include a lot of randos across the country who might cheer for someone else in football or not follow football at all.

2) What schools had their large populations possibly too favored when in reality the area might not follow them that well? Boston College jumps out as an obvious candidate.

 

[brgRC90]

I'm actually doing this in Excel now, but a SUPER rudimentary way to adjust this in what I would consider to be a more correct direction would be to calculate two numbers and subtract each to get a new total for each team:

1) How many of these fans are for basketball only? I think it's obvious that the Duke and Kansas numbers, for example, include a lot of randos across the country who might cheer for someone else in football or not follow football at all.

2) What schools had their large populations possibly too favored when in reality the area might not follow them that well? Boston College jumps out as an obvious candidate.

Duke and Kansas are two numbers that are hard to explain without including basketball in there somehow. Are they casual fans who like the football towns because of the basketball teams but not enough to show up at a stadium or watch in TV except in a good year?

 

[RUStatenIsland]

QUESTION: Where are you getting the numbers? Because they seem way off. There's no way Ohio State has 4x the fans as USC.

That sounds about right to me. Ohio State football is a religion in that state and most of the region. USC definitely has a lot of fans but it's not ingrained in the Southern California culture like Ohio State football is in the Midwest.

 

[brgRC90]

That sounds about right to me. Ohio State football is a religion in that state and most of the region. USC definitely has a lot of fans but it's not ingrained in the Southern California culture like Ohio State football is in the Midwest.

And remember that Ohioans have long had little to root for with the Bengals and especially the Browns. In LA, they love the Lakers. The Trojans have 77K Twitter followers, the Lakers have over 10 million. The Dodgers have 2.4 million, UCLA football 116k. I suspect USC gets lots and lots of fairweather fans when they're doing well.