Here’s A Ranking Of College Football’s Most Loyal Fan Bases

Harrison Lee10 years ago

Have you ever wondered which college football team has the most loyal fan base? Are you a loyal fan? Are fair weather fans even reading this?

Emory University’s sports marketing analytics group conducted its annual study of the most loyal fan bases in college football, or “fan equity,” as the group calls it. The group has a pretty crazy model it uses to determine who is the most loyal to their team.

From Emory University:

Our approach is data and statistically driven, as we look at how fans support their teams after controlling for how well the team performs on the field, the market it plays in, and school characteristics. For the fan equity analysis, we build a statistical model using publicly available data from the last fourteen years that predicts team revenues as a function of metrics related to team performance such as winning percentage, bowl participation, and other factors such as number of students, stadium capacity, etc. We then compare actual revenues over the last few years to what is predicted by our model.

Taking in all this data for every major college football team, the results aren’t too surprising. Texas leads the nation for having the most loyal fans, and apparently, there isn’t even a competition for the number one spot, despite putting out a subpar team since the Colt McCoy years.

Here are the top 10 most loyal fan bases, according to them:

1. Texas Longhorns
2. Notre Dame Fighting Irish
3. Georgia Bulldogs
4. Florida Gators
5. Auburn Tigers
6. Arkansas Razorbacks
7. Michigan Wolverines
8. Oklahoma Sooners
9. Iowa Hawkeyes
10. Nebraska Cornhuskers

Alabama and LSU just missed the top 10, coming in at 11 and 12, respectively.

[via Emory University]

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