(06-16-2022 08:32 AM)TexanMark Wrote: This analysis might measure breadth but not depth. I.E. Breadth is a fan likes a team casually but only gets invested when they get in the Top 25 or make a run in the basketball tournament. Depth is a fan who bleeds the colors: season tickets yet lives 4 hours away, makes bowl games, attends basketball tournaments, donates money....etc...
Very solid point. And for college sports, it's more an art than a science to decide how you should weight breadth vs depth. How do you rate a Miami, whose stadium is half empty, but if they can put together a couple of back-to-back top 10 seasons they're a national sensation again. (Don't think my Miami example applies that's fine, but there's probably a school you WOULD agree that this applies to).
Quote:As a lifelong Cuse fan I can tell you we have breadth not depth. When we win...the bandwagon grows overnight with NYC and other east coast folks along with Upstate NY diaspora. When we are mediocre (basically most of the last 20 years in FB and 5 in BB) it is only the local T-shirt fans that attend games. I don't believe we are the 14th largest but more like around 35-40.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MiUOwx8...LLCoJ/view
Top 15 or 20 does sound suspiciously high for Syracuse, but people forget how many people are in their vague area. New York State has from 5-7M people outside the New York metro area (depending on how far you stretch northwards), and Syracuse is their local P5 team.
(06-16-2022 11:30 AM)MU88 Wrote: Any list that puts Nebraska behind Wisconsin has no credibility.
Ehh. State of Wisconsin has 6M people, Nebraska has 2M. So maybe?
(06-16-2022 12:20 PM)YNot Wrote: University of Oregon has 1.5 million more fans than the entire state of Oregon?...and more fans than Clemson and Florida State...combined?
Phil Knight and the Nike effect, I suppose. Those wild funky uniforms caused ripples across the internet, probably spiked sales of Ducks gear to people who wouldn't know a Eugene from a Corvallis.
Quote:Some obvious outliers. Why ignore data points like recent attendance reports and TV viewership numbers?
Viewership numbers are pretty easy to argue with--opponent, timeslot, channel / network all move the needle a lot. And schools can just fabricate their attendance reports.
(06-16-2022 12:29 PM)utpotts Wrote: Pretty sure Michigan has a bigger fan base than both Texas and Penn State.
That's the sort of thing where we don't have clear enough data to prove anything. Measuring those relative scales would need a better methodology that we or those guys have. But I wouldn't knock a methodology based on "eye test" if your eye test is how you rank Texas, Michigan and Penn State against each other.
(06-16-2022 05:28 PM)ken d Wrote: I agree. There are way too many examples that make no sense. Syracuse #14? Seriously? UNC ahead of South Carolina and Clemson? I don't think so. Even if you count the thousands of Tar Heel fans who come to games disguised as empty seats they don't come close to their southern cousins.
I think they put weight on sheer state size, once you have some visibility in your home state. And NC has 10M, SC has 5M.