Tag: Fan bases

Where is Notre Dame in study of largest college football fan bases?

Are you surprised where the SEC’s best teams wound up?

You don’t just find Notre Dame football fans close to South Bend, Ind., or in the midwest but instead spread entirely around the nation.  For some people, it’s because of the connection the Fighting Irish football team made with loved ones.  Others may appreciate the history of the small private midwest university rising to the nation’s elite college football programs with a true underdog story.  And others may just say they like Notre Dame because you always know they’ll be on NBC for each home game.

Whatever the reason, Notre Dame is the closest to a national college football team there is.  So where does that put them in terms of the size of their fan base versus the rest of college football?

Self-proclaimed strategy analyst Tony Altimore did what he does best: analyzed.  This past spring, Altimore researched the fan bases of all 130 Football Bowl Subdivision teams.  To the surprise of exactly no one, Notre Dame finished near the very top of that list.

Just how high up were the Fighting Irish faithful, though?

Ranking the most loyal fan bases in the SEC

Ranking the SEC’s most loyal fan bases.

God, family and [insert your college football team here].

If you’re from the South, you know what I’m talking about. There’s a direct correlation between your favorite team’s record and your overall happiness. And there’s a feeling of emptiness from January to Labor Day weekend.

Some fan bases down here take football more seriously than others. But aside from Vanderbilt, there’s not a big gap separating No. 13 from No. 1 on our list of the most loyal SEC fan bases.

What exactly makes a fan base more loyal than another one?

There’s home-game attendance, which has been on a decline across the nation in recent years. There’s also road-game attendance, which I would argue is the ultimate measuring stick of just how loyal a fan base is.

But beyond attendance numbers, there’s the overall passion for your program, which is harder to measure. Aside from Alabama, every SEC team has had a bad season or stretch of seasons since 2010. How did their fans react? Did they lose interest or were they still glued to their televisions every Saturday? Do they stop wearing their team’s apparel following a loss? Stop giving thanks for their program at the dinner table?

Again, hard to measure, but here’s a list of what I consider to be the most loyal fan bases in the SEC from least loyal to the most:

SEC worst-to-first series: College towns | head coaching jobs | stadiums | helmets | logos | live mascots | traditions | uniforms