04/26/24
December 04, 2014
College Football Fan Map: The New York Times has given college football the fan map treatment, creating an interactive map of fan allegiances based on Facebook likes. "All told, 84 programs can reasonably claim to be the most popular college football team somewhere in the United States," the paper reports. You can zoom in on the interactive map to see zip-code specific findings. One discovery: "The most consistently loyal fans in America live in Wisconsin. More than 87 percent of fans in some Wisconsin ZIP codes support the Badgers, a level that isn't reached anywhere else, our estimates show."
Yep. I didn't notice the date in the URL when I posted it.
UNT is 4% short of having dominance over one Denton-area zip code. I'll have to settle for us being one almost white dot in the sea of burnt orange between Dallas and the Red River.
I'm surprised USF doesn't make the top three anywhere around Tampa. I wonder if that would've been different when they made their improbable rise into the top 5 for a couple years in a row.
posted by rcade at 01:58 PM on December 04, 2014
I'm surprised USF doesn't make the top three anywhere around Tampa.
As a USF alum...sadly, I'm not. USF hasn't reached the point where it owns it's own backyard. People who go to USF still are people who couldn't get into UF or FSU.
Winning would definitely help more, but things don't seem to be getting much better with Coach Willie Taggart.
posted by Bonkers at 09:02 AM on December 05, 2014
I didn't see it get above 10% for Western Michigan in and around Kalamazoo, and I'm finding it hard to believe that.
posted by bo_fan at 10:08 AM on December 06, 2014
I find it pretty funny that North Carolina is covered in Tar Heel blue. Yeah, no. Down East should be ECU purple and there should be a lot more Wolfpack red throughout the state.
posted by NoMich at 11:07 AM on December 06, 2014
Fresno State's map area is much bigger than I would have guessed.
Kansas State should own Kansas on sheer merit alone. Their area looks like the spot where Dorothy's house used to be.
The display has a glitch that they haven't fixed yet. The map area for the Oregon Ducks sphere of influence should be changing color on a daily basis.
posted by beaverboard at 12:43 PM on December 06, 2014
I was going crazy for a few minutes because I KNEW we talked about this before, but the search options on Sportsfilter are, shall we say, "stunted".
Thankfully, some crafted Google searches from their main page and I was able to find the discussion, and where I even made mention of the Wisconsin thing.
They were wrong about not reaching a level anywhere else in the US, as Hayes County Nebraska supports the Cornhuskers at 88.4%.
Edit: They've got it at a zip code level now, and I can't pinpoint Hayes County Nebraska properly. In fact, it looks like the numbers for Nebraska aren't the same as they used to be...