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re: Which College Football Team Has The Biggest Fan Base?
Posted on 9/14/12 at 8:32 am to davesdawgs
Posted on 9/14/12 at 8:32 am to davesdawgs
This list is ridiculous. LSU is way better than 18...
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Posted on 9/14/12 at 9:00 am to Fleur de Tide
Well, one thing is factual... Baylor not being in the top 100 is not a surprise.
Posted on 9/14/12 at 9:05 am to Ball Gravy
You want the biggest fanbase, I would use revenue. It won't be perfect for the single big donor schools, but it will be a better representation than this list.
Posted on 9/14/12 at 9:37 am to NukemVol
This list is not even close to being accurate. How can you make online presence so high? It gives unfair advantage to schools like GT, who we all know the nerds are online 36 hours/day (of course they run dual monitors).
Posted on 9/14/12 at 9:41 am to dbt_Geaux_Tigers_196
All of these lists are relative. Here is another one that I think has a better methodology. It favors A&M so I will admit to being a bit biased but there are far fewer surprises. I like how it measures intensity of fans by region as well so a lightly populated state like Alabama is far more relevant than a more heavily populated state because virtually everyone in Alabama loves college football.
Geography of College Football
As for the person that asked about popularity in Texas, you have Texas and A&M and then a huge drop. Texas has about 450k living alumni, A&M has over 360k. Both have 50k students. There are several other public schools of good size like Texas State and North Texas but virtually all of their fans associate loyalty with another school. UH is primarily a commuter school as well with split loyalties, it has some loyal fans but not many. Also the A&M and Texas total systems are about 100k and most of them affiliate towards the primary campus in terms of loyalty, though not always.
The third most popular is Tech. Tech is composed of primarily 2 types of students. The kids from sparsely populated West Texas in Lubbock, Amarillo, Midland, etc that wanted to stay closer to home and little rich kids from the Burbs of D/FW, Houston, Austin, and SA that had parents willing to send them away for an education quality they could easily get staying closer to home.
Texas of course has a lot of private schools. All of the private schools have the same basic MO. They have a relatively small fan base but a group of very rich donors that are as powerful as any school. You have Baylor which is the largest and oldest (around 14k students) that is academically below A&M and Texas and expensive. TCU is next in the pecking order and is slightly smaller but has deep ties to the Ft Worth community which is loaded with some ridiculously wealthy folks. SMU is a solid academic school that is very expensive. They could have been like Miami had they not gotten the death penalty but now they are kind of trapped on the outside looking in. Pony Excess is a must see for any college football fan. Then you have Rice which is the Vandy/Duke of Texas except they only care about baseball.
Geography of College Football
As for the person that asked about popularity in Texas, you have Texas and A&M and then a huge drop. Texas has about 450k living alumni, A&M has over 360k. Both have 50k students. There are several other public schools of good size like Texas State and North Texas but virtually all of their fans associate loyalty with another school. UH is primarily a commuter school as well with split loyalties, it has some loyal fans but not many. Also the A&M and Texas total systems are about 100k and most of them affiliate towards the primary campus in terms of loyalty, though not always.
The third most popular is Tech. Tech is composed of primarily 2 types of students. The kids from sparsely populated West Texas in Lubbock, Amarillo, Midland, etc that wanted to stay closer to home and little rich kids from the Burbs of D/FW, Houston, Austin, and SA that had parents willing to send them away for an education quality they could easily get staying closer to home.
Texas of course has a lot of private schools. All of the private schools have the same basic MO. They have a relatively small fan base but a group of very rich donors that are as powerful as any school. You have Baylor which is the largest and oldest (around 14k students) that is academically below A&M and Texas and expensive. TCU is next in the pecking order and is slightly smaller but has deep ties to the Ft Worth community which is loaded with some ridiculously wealthy folks. SMU is a solid academic school that is very expensive. They could have been like Miami had they not gotten the death penalty but now they are kind of trapped on the outside looking in. Pony Excess is a must see for any college football fan. Then you have Rice which is the Vandy/Duke of Texas except they only care about baseball.
Posted on 9/14/12 at 9:53 am to bayou2003
quote:
Um shouldn't they be in the Top 10 considering the size of the state, number of alumni, endowment, etc.
See: University of Texas. They (currently) have the lions share of casual football fans in the state. Ie, those that jump on the bandwagon because they either didn't go to college or because their college no longer plays football has historically done worse than A&M or Texas (like Texas State/UTSA/Southwestern alumni)
Posted on 9/14/12 at 9:55 am to joe.liberst
quote:
Texas State has around 35,000 students, so you could say that it is really popular, but I wouldn't lump it in with the best.
Texas State has a lot of students, but their football program has traditionally just not had very many fans and most of their students appear to be Longhorn fans first and Bobcat fans when it suits them.
Posted on 9/14/12 at 9:56 am to winyahpercy
quote:
Most Rabid Fans
2. Texas
I'm going to have to see the method for determining this. Texas has a LARGE following, but when the bandwagon breaks down they have a large dropoff. The tshirt fans put away those ugly shirts until the team does better.
Posted on 9/14/12 at 9:57 am to dbt_Geaux_Tigers_196
Yea where the frick is Notre Dame on that list?
Posted on 9/14/12 at 10:11 am to relapse98
"Rabid" Texas fans are an oxmoron. Are there some? Sure, but all you have to do is go to a game at DKR and you can see it is an NFL environment. Texas does very well as the pro team of Austin and that is the primary feel, they sell a huge amount of season tickets to companies in Austin. Going to a game there feels a lot like going to a Cowboys game, most folks are there for the social event and the tailgating prior. The loudest fans also tend to be folks that never graduated from there. Even their largest donor and the name behind their Business School amongst other things (Red McCombs) is not a Texas grad. The only folks I have ever had be a jerk to me (outside of current students at a game) about A&M have been folks that never have taken a class at Texas. The interaction between most A&M and Texas grads tends to be very civil.
The "tshirts" will end up going with whomever is winning though. In the '80s and early '90s it was all A&M. In the '00s it was all Texas. Now it is starting to split up. My guess is that now that A&M is in the SEC and the schools don't play each other you will start to see a lot more folks that are fans of both schools. Most people will just pull for a Texas team. It's one of the main advantages of A&M's SEC move, we will get a lot more casual fans that like SEC football and just happen to live in Texas. Over 20 million people live within 250 miles of both schools and most of them are football fans, there is a lot of support there up for grabs.
The "tshirts" will end up going with whomever is winning though. In the '80s and early '90s it was all A&M. In the '00s it was all Texas. Now it is starting to split up. My guess is that now that A&M is in the SEC and the schools don't play each other you will start to see a lot more folks that are fans of both schools. Most people will just pull for a Texas team. It's one of the main advantages of A&M's SEC move, we will get a lot more casual fans that like SEC football and just happen to live in Texas. Over 20 million people live within 250 miles of both schools and most of them are football fans, there is a lot of support there up for grabs.
Posted on 9/14/12 at 10:48 am to dbt_Geaux_Tigers_196
quote:
46. MSU
Posted on 9/14/12 at 11:06 am to winyahpercy
quote:
Um shouldn't they be in the Top 10 considering the size of the state, number of alumni, endowment, etc.
Couldn't the same be said for Florida?
Posted on 9/14/12 at 11:13 am to dbt_Geaux_Tigers_196
Unranked/>100th largest fanbase.
Top 30 merchandise sales.
Most of us only need one t shirt a year.
Top 30 merchandise sales.
Most of us only need one t shirt a year.
Posted on 9/14/12 at 11:14 am to BigD Ag
quote:
Couldn't the same be said for Florida?
And they're not far removed from 2 national championships...
We've done decent for ourselves considering the utter crap that has been put on the field for the majority of 2 decades.
Posted on 9/14/12 at 11:29 am to dbt_Geaux_Tigers_196
So we bring 90K plus to every home game and we're behind Rutgers and Iowa?
Posted on 9/14/12 at 11:35 am to CBandits82
Whoa Whoa Whoa, Southern Miss at 35?! Who made up this list? They only have 10 fans!
Posted on 9/14/12 at 11:46 am to dbt_Geaux_Tigers_196
quote:
Missouri unranked ( > 100)
god, they really just do not belong.
The SEC is worse today than it was a year ago.
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