“Football is a religion, and Saturday is the day of holy obligation,” famed former Michigan football broadcaster Bob Ufer once said.
That’s true particularly across the sport of college football, where the tradition and frenzy are taken up several, several notches above its professional NFL counterpart. But, not all programs are built like all others.
The Big Ten Conference is one of college football’s two premier conferences, also sitting among the Power Five, and it boasts some of the top programs in the entire sport. From Michigan to Ohio State to Penn State to Wisconsin to Nebraska, the league oozes tradition, passion, brand recognition, all while embodying old-school, hard-nosed football. And with that, the Big Ten not only has some of the nation’s best fan bases, but it packs butts into seats unlike any other conference.
But, like we said, not all within the conference are created equal.
With that in mind, we rated each team in the Big Ten’s fan base according to loyalty, going from worst to first. We took into account attendance, overall fervor for the team, how many fans stay on the bandwagon when the going gets tough, and the general dispersal of fans across the country. Here’s how each Big Ten team stacks up against each other.