Nate Silver on college football fan bases

Despite their strong performance on the field, meanwhile, Washington and Oregon rank outside the top 40 in terms of their fan footprint. And other conference schools, like Oregon State, Stanford and Washington State, do poorly by major-conference standards....

On the other hand, the Pacific-12’s latest targets — Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State — have about 5.1 million fans between them, which would expand the conference’s aggregate fan base by almost 70 percent. No wonder the Pacific-12 might be willing to make some academic and geographic compromises in order to get them.

8 months ago ursula 5 comments 0 recs |

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I find this stuff fascinating

I like how a lot of self-perpetuating myths here are gently tweaked. Besides the quotes above:

- how big the USC fan base is: good but not one of the best.

- Or how it makes sense for the ACC to expand into Syracuse, Pitt, and eventually Rutgers and either West Virginia or UConn. Or especially…Notre Dame. Get ND, Cuse, and Rutgers and you make NYC into a good ACC base. And ND brings in a share of Boston and Philly and DC.

- No real reason for the Big Ten to expand outside of ND or Texas. Missouri would be acceptable but expanding east (Rutgers, say) adds little-though a combo of Rutgers and ND would be okay.

- How surprisingly small the Florida St base is. If the SEC poached Florida St that South Florida would be a decent fall-back position.

- We know Furd has a hard time filling its stadium with butts. With a very small and nationally dispersed fan base, it makes sense.

- fBSU has a larger fan base than OSU, Utah, Wazzu, Furd, and Arizona. Almost as much as Colorado though I say Colorado has a good deal of potential. In many ways, fBSU is like a junior SEC team.

- SEC expansion prospects are Missouri or four of the ACC schools: Florida St, Clemson, Miami, and VPI. Maybe West Virginia too. Okay Georgia Tech here too but I say the GT fan base is estimated to be larger than it really is and at Georgia’s expense. Not as much though as an SEC loyalist would say.

by ursula on Sep 19, 2011 4:57 PM PDT reply actions

Definitely made an interesting case for adding fBSU to the Pac...

this link was quite interesting too http://www.commoncensus.org/sports_map.php?sport=5

Get it done... Paul.

by 420Phenom on Sep 22, 2011 2:16 AM PDT up reply actions

Duck fan base is unlike any other

I think a lot of the other fan bases are “bandwagon” fans… There is truly nothing else like duck fans. While traveling outside the country I have embraced hugs and high fives from other duck fans and then moved on. I have never seen this camaraderie from other universities… USC fans don’t talk to each other as strangers, nor do any of these other schools.. When the PAC 12 does become the 16 it is only going to increase origins fan base and our awesome factor. We are much more than just Nike u.

by DesertDuckFan on Sep 19, 2011 5:17 PM PDT reply actions