The New York Times recently worked with Facebook to conduct a study determining which parts of the country have the highest concentration of college football fans, and much like its two SEC powerhouse teams do on the field, the state of Alabama dominated the competition.
The Times’ Neil Irwin and Kevin Quealy explain:
Alabama has the highest concentration of college football fans. This perhaps shouldn’t be surprising, given that the University of Alabama has finished the season ranked No. 1 in the country in three of the last five seasons and that Auburn has finished twice in the top two… Almost 34 percent of Alabama Facebook users were fans of a college football team, more than five percentage points higher than in the state with the next-highest level.
It is difficult to separate correlation from causation from coincidence, however.
Is Alabama college football fandom more intense because its teams are so good? Or are its teams so good because there is such intense fan support, including of the financial variety? (Nick Saban may be the best coach in college football, but he doesn’t come cheap, with a reported $7 million annual salary.) Or have the passionate fans of Alabama been blessed with lucky several years?
We don’t have useful historical data, because widespread adoption of Facebook is too recent a phenomenon.
Regardless, the Facebook data offers circumstantial evidence that last year’s Iron Bowl rivalry game between then-No. 1 Alabama and No. 4 Auburn, featuring arguably the greatest ending to a college football game of all time, created a perfect vortex of human emotion.
The data Facebook provided the Times not only showed the rankings on the state level, it even drilled down to the county level, allowing us to find out which counties in Alabama are the most college football crazed areas of the state.
Using that data, Yellowhammer was able to create the following map and county rankings.
And if you’re interested in digging even deeper, head over to the Time’s Upshot blog for an interactive map showing which areas of the state root for which teams. Here’s a preview:
