Facebook data gets more and more useless by the year in terms of generalizing to the whole population. Younger demographics have pretty much left Facebook in the dust in favor of Twitter and Instagram.

Some of the most loyal and passionate college football fans are among the older generation, and most of us don't give two shyts about lah-de-dah Facebook.

(11-10-2014 11:45 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  Many Texans love their CFB but it's nothing compared to the sheer numbers of pro and HS fans in this state. Which makes sense. Almost everyone went to a HS with a FB team and anyone can jump on the bandwagon of the Cowboys or Texans with no affiliation. So while college does have its bandwagon element, most of it's fan base are alums and their families with ties to one of the 12 Texas FBS schools.

Texas would probably be on top if you combined college football with HS and pro.

I've seen a lot of interest in Football in Kentucky the last 20 years or so. That's why You can easily get 50,000 at Louisville and 65,000 at Kentucky every weekend for home games. H.S. Football is very popular too. Now with Both of the States Major Schools in P5 conference even more interest has spiked.
This is also a plug for Cincinnati to be in a P5 conference as Ohio is plenty big to support 2 P5 programs and as the chart shows there is a major interest in Football in that region.

I think Facebook overall is probably a pretty good indicator. Yeah there's a ton of people not on it, not liking, etc. The sample size is still huge though and while it's doubtless the map probably varies a little from reality, I don't think there is a more reliable way to do it.

(11-10-2014 02:14 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 09:21 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 08:22 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  That jives pretty well with my thinking. Only two surprises:

Not Texas? Actually, that fits well with my thinking, but most Texans (especially on this board) would tell you that football is God in their home state.

The population is so large in Texas (particularly the larger markets in Dallas and Houston) that a lot of the football fandom is much more dispersed. I'm sure you'd find a lot fans there that might just like the Cowboys and/or high school football but not have any college football loyalty. That being said, the fact that Texas has a significantly higher percentage of college football fans than states like California and New York is pretty huge - each percentage point represents a *massive* number in a state with that many people.

Quote:I thought Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina would be even lower. I bet if you did a ratio of CFB/CBB, or football/basketball, those would be just as low as the northeast.

All of those states are still strong college sports markets overall. Plus, remember that Kansas has Kansas State, Indiana has Notre Dame, Kentucky has Louisville, and North Carolina has NC State, all of whom have good (or in the case of Notre Dame, great) football fan bases. College basketball might be the #1 sport in those states, but they can still support college football in good numbers. (Similarly, in the pro sports realm, almost anyone from Chicago will tell you that it's a Bears town first and foremost. However, its support for the Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox are as strong as anywhere else, too.)

Frank, Texas is pretty much where I believed they would be. We all forget the % of Hispanics who culturally don't follow college ball the way African Americans and Caucasians do. Add to them the number of others who are not interested because of personal choice and that fairly well explains Texas.

Stereotyping much?

If you take a look at schools like UTEP and Fresno State which have a solid fan base, the vast majority of its fans are Hispanic. New Mexico, Arizona, Arizona State, the L.A. schools, etc come to mind as well.

Maybe in SEC country it's that way but not here in the Southwest.

(11-10-2014 11:40 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 11:23 AM)gosports1 Wrote:  I'm sorry, baseing fandom of college FB on "facebook likes" is hardly an accurate way, imo, to determine popularity of ANYTHING, even college FB. Believe it or not there are many people in this country that aren't on Facebook.

Actually, I find that the Facebook data passes the "smell test" better than anything out there (including data from Twitter or polls from entities like Harris). The fact that there are people that aren't on Facebook isn't a good reason to discount the data at all. We're talking about millions of people volunteering information about what they "like" without prompting (which is fairly good proxy for determining a fan of a team, as opposed to many polls that prompt you to pick a favorite team or sport even if it's something that you wouldn't have volunteered yourself), compared to only around a thousand people or less for most of the polls that we rely on this country. For example, Nate Silver was able to predict the 2012 presidential electoral college results for all 50 states using polls that had less than 1000 people per state. If you can extrapolate those results for a country of over 300 million with only a few thousand people, think of how powerful of a data set that Facebook and Twitter can provide when they actually have tens of millions of users.

The "believe or not" factoid is actually that Facebook's average user age is now about equal to the average age of a person in the United States. It's not the young-skewing demo that a lot of people that try to discount this data want to believe.

Is it perfect info? Of course not, as you can't get perfect info unless you get every single person that lives in a particular area to respond truthfully to a poll. However, the Facebook data provides a sample size that completely blows away any type of attempts at polls that we've seen in the past. Out of everything that I've ever seen to attempt to measure sports team popularity, the Facebook data is the best BY FAR.

The only quibble I've had with the Facebook fan data is to question the terms used to compile.

Former AD at AState wasn't very tech savvy so there was a real haphazard approach. After the NY Times did their what colleges do people like I began poking through profiles of users of my site's Facebook Page (AState Nation) to see what they had "liked" to get an idea of what NYT would have found. Many liked "ASU Football" would that be interpreted as AState or the school in Arizona. Some liked Arkansas State football (that's easy to interpret). Some liked AState Football (if you don't search it you don't find it). Some liked my site but no other related site. Some liked a competing site. Some liked Red Wolves Football.

Presumably there are people who like War Eagle and if it isn't in the search Auburn gets under-counted.

But a big picture thing such as how many like college football or the NFL the risk of under-count is far less. Even in measuring teams there aren't that many schools that have an under-count risk.

(11-11-2014 02:14 AM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 02:14 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 09:21 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 08:22 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  That jives pretty well with my thinking. Only two surprises:

Not Texas? Actually, that fits well with my thinking, but most Texans (especially on this board) would tell you that football is God in their home state.

The population is so large in Texas (particularly the larger markets in Dallas and Houston) that a lot of the football fandom is much more dispersed. I'm sure you'd find a lot fans there that might just like the Cowboys and/or high school football but not have any college football loyalty. That being said, the fact that Texas has a significantly higher percentage of college football fans than states like California and New York is pretty huge - each percentage point represents a *massive* number in a state with that many people.

Quote:I thought Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina would be even lower. I bet if you did a ratio of CFB/CBB, or football/basketball, those would be just as low as the northeast.

All of those states are still strong college sports markets overall. Plus, remember that Kansas has Kansas State, Indiana has Notre Dame, Kentucky has Louisville, and North Carolina has NC State, all of whom have good (or in the case of Notre Dame, great) football fan bases. College basketball might be the #1 sport in those states, but they can still support college football in good numbers. (Similarly, in the pro sports realm, almost anyone from Chicago will tell you that it's a Bears town first and foremost. However, its support for the Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox are as strong as anywhere else, too.)

Frank, Texas is pretty much where I believed they would be. We all forget the % of Hispanics who culturally don't follow college ball the way African Americans and Caucasians do. Add to them the number of others who are not interested because of personal choice and that fairly well explains Texas.

Stereotyping much?

If you take a look at schools like UTEP and Fresno State which have a solid fan base, the vast majority of its fans are Hispanic. New Mexico, Arizona, Arizona State, the L.A. schools, etc come to mind as well.

Maybe in SEC country it's that way but not here in the Southwest.

It would be "stereotyping" if JRSEC's comment referred to an individual Mexican-American. But it wasn't. JRSEC's made a broad statement about Mexican-Americans in general. The statement is true, as any sports marketing expert would tell you, and in fact it applies to immigrants in general. As a group, immigrants do not follow American football as passionately as native-born Americans do.

Perhaps most of the Mexican-Americans you know personally are 3rd or 4th generation. In that case, I suspect that their tastes in sports are similar to any other native-born American. In fact in large swathes of the Midwest, Mexicans are pretty much considered "white" because most of them that have made it this far into the interior of the country probably have ancestors that were in the USA before mine were, and their group identity is no stronger than the group identity of Italian-Americans or German-Americans.

(11-11-2014 02:14 AM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 02:14 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 09:21 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 08:22 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  That jives pretty well with my thinking. Only two surprises:

Not Texas? Actually, that fits well with my thinking, but most Texans (especially on this board) would tell you that football is God in their home state.

The population is so large in Texas (particularly the larger markets in Dallas and Houston) that a lot of the football fandom is much more dispersed. I'm sure you'd find a lot fans there that might just like the Cowboys and/or high school football but not have any college football loyalty. That being said, the fact that Texas has a significantly higher percentage of college football fans than states like California and New York is pretty huge - each percentage point represents a *massive* number in a state with that many people.

Quote:I thought Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina would be even lower. I bet if you did a ratio of CFB/CBB, or football/basketball, those would be just as low as the northeast.

All of those states are still strong college sports markets overall. Plus, remember that Kansas has Kansas State, Indiana has Notre Dame, Kentucky has Louisville, and North Carolina has NC State, all of whom have good (or in the case of Notre Dame, great) football fan bases. College basketball might be the #1 sport in those states, but they can still support college football in good numbers. (Similarly, in the pro sports realm, almost anyone from Chicago will tell you that it's a Bears town first and foremost. However, its support for the Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox are as strong as anywhere else, too.)

Frank, Texas is pretty much where I believed they would be. We all forget the % of Hispanics who culturally don't follow college ball the way African Americans and Caucasians do. Add to them the number of others who are not interested because of personal choice and that fairly well explains Texas.

Stereotyping much?

If you take a look at schools like UTEP and Fresno State which have a solid fan base, the vast majority of its fans are Hispanic. New Mexico, Arizona, Arizona State, the L.A. schools, etc come to mind as well.

Maybe in SEC country it's that way but not here in the Southwest.

I was at the 2010 Sun Bowl and most of the 53,000 or so fans were local and many were Hispanic.

They were loud and enthusiastic during the game. Most had adopted ND as their
team for that day

I have to think most if those fans are normally avid UTEP fans. From my limited experience, I agree with UTEPDallas.

The problem I see is that it is based on percentages. If county A has 100 FB users and 10 like some CFB page they score 10%. If county B has 100,000 FB users and 10,000 like a CFB page they score the same 10% even though they have 9,990 more "likes." Put another way, the 25% that one county scores could be 1,000 fans. The 10% another county scores could be 100,000 fans.

(11-11-2014 07:20 PM)Wolfman Wrote:  The problem I see is that it is based on percentages. If county A has 100 FB users and 10 like some CFB page they score 10%. If county B has 100,000 FB users and 10,000 like a CFB page they score the same 10% even though they have 9,990 more "likes." Put another way, the 25% that one county scores could be 1,000 fans. The 10% another county scores could be 100,000 fans.

I think that's kind of the point...

There are probably more college football fans by sheer number in NYC than Tuscaloosa. But in which city do you think college football matters most?

(11-10-2014 11:50 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 11:40 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(11-10-2014 11:23 AM)gosports1 Wrote:  I'm sorry, baseing fandom of college FB on "facebook likes" is hardly an accurate way, imo, to determine popularity of ANYTHING, even college FB. Believe it or not there are many people in this country that aren't on Facebook.

Actually, I find that the Facebook data passes the "smell test" better than anything out there (including data from Twitter or polls from entities like Harris). The fact that there are people that aren't on Facebook isn't a good reason to discount the data at all. We're talking about millions of people volunteering information about what they "like" without prompting, compared to only around a thousand people or less for most of the polls that we rely on this country. For example, Nate Silver was able to predict the 2012 presidential electoral college results for all 50 states using polls that had less than 1000 people per state. If you can extrapolate those results for a country of over 300 million with only a few thousand people, think of how powerful of a data set that Facebook and Twitter can provide when they actually have tens of millions of users.

The "believe or not" factoid is actually that Facebook's average user age is now equal the average age of a person in the United States. It's not the young-skewing demo that a lot of people that try to discount this data want to believe.

Is it perfect info? Of course not, as you can't get perfect info unless you get every single person to respond truthfully to a poll. However, the Facebook data provides a sample size that completely blows away any type of attempts at polls that we've seen in the past. Out of everything that I've ever seen to attempt to measure sports team popularity, the Facebook data is the best BY FAR.

I agree about some broad facebook data. But a lot of it is pretty obscure. Most people I know only "like" 3 or 4 things, so when you get to more and more detailed items the survey becomes less and less accurate. They may like "football" without bothering to delve into which level of football they like. This is going to be more common in areas where there are several levels of football and people actually enjoy them all (like Texas or big cities). They may "like" their team without bothering to like "college football" in general, and again, this is going to be more common in some areas than others.

This doesn't even account for other factors. For example, UC wasn't included in the NYT survey of college football fanbases because we just have 1 page for our athletic department - we don't separate it out into football and basketball. Pardon my French, but it was quite a douchy thing for NYT to neglect to include us in their survey, and then specifically call us out in the article for not carrying any zip codes.

Don't even get me started on that. I even wrote an email to the NYT writer who posted the story, but he never replied. What a freaking joke.