Top 5 best college football fans (Nebraska, Big 12, Ten)

[ScoPro]

Wait a minute.

Are we talking about best supporting fans, or best behaved fans?

[Chriscross309]

Originally Posted by kidphilly

Here is a fan map based on census alignment

Results show:

1 - Penn State
2 - Ohio State
3 - Michigan
4 - Notre Dame
CommonCensus Map Project - Sports Step


And a map of alignment by fan
CommonCensus Sports Map

this can't be right

[Mr. GE]

How can ALL of your lists only have Alabama from the SEC... the conference that has the largest attendance year in and year out. GTFOH

[le roi]

by 'best', i think of the place who has the most loyal fans, after taking into consideration how big the school is, and how much they win. So for example, given how HUGE Texas, Florida, and Ohio State are, if they had fans as loyal as those in, say, Arkansas, they'd need a 200,000 seat stadium.

i'm a homer. I think the gamecocks have the most loyal fans... not many historically mediocre programs could go 1-21 over 2 years, and still average 75,000 people per home game. Some teams can't even get that when they're winning.

But ranking other teams, I think the following are worthy of mention:
Nebraska
Iowa
Oklahoma
LSU
Alabama
Texas A&M
Clemson
Arkansas
Auburn
West Virginia
Penn State
Oregon

[Mr. GE]

I know its not all about attendance but you can see who is going to watch BAD programs too... So they will be really DIE hard if they are going to watch bad programs

2010 NCAA DIVISION I FBS ATTENDANCE TEAM LEADERS
Rank School G Attendance Average
1. Michigan 7 782,776 111,825
2. Ohio St. 8 842,221 105,278
3. Penn St. 7 729,636 104,234
4. Alabama 7 712,747 101,821
5. Texas 7 704,580 100,654
6. Tennessee 7 698,465 99,781
7. Georgia 6 556,476 92,746
8. LSU 7 649,023 92,718
9. Florida 7 633,579 90,511
10. Auburn 8 688,692 86,087
11. Nebraska 7 599,648 85,664
12. Oklahoma 6 508,426 84,738
13. Texas A&M 7 577,338 82,477
14. Notre Dame 7 565,565 80,795
15. Southern California 6 479,444 79,907
16. Wisconsin 7 559,035 79,862
17. Clemson 7 542,280 77,469
18. South Carolina 7 536,675 76,668
19. Michigan St. 7 514,894 73,556
20. Florida St. 7 498,890 71,270
21. Iowa 7 494,095 70,585
22. Arkansas 6 413,591 68,932
23. Washington 6 397,581 66,264
24. Virginia Tech 7 463,631 66,233
25. Kentucky 7 462,488 66,070
26. Missouri 6 369,240 61,540
27. BYU 6 368,283 61,381
28. UCLA 6 362,253 60,376
29. Oregon 6 356,387 59,398
30. North Carolina 6 349,500 58,250


2010 NCAA DIVISION I FBS CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE
Total 2010 Change
Rank Division I FBS Teams Games Attendance Average In Avg.
1. Southeastern 12 85 6,521,151 76,719 432
2. Big Ten 11 76 5,480,023 72,106 336
3. Big 12 12 83 5,226,903 *62,975 100
4. Pacific-10 10 62 3,336,793 53,819 -367
5. Atlantic Coast 12 79 4,067,984 51,493 244
6. Big East 8 53 2,386,461 45,028 224
7. Mountain West 9 54 1,861,071 34,464 1,263
8. Conference USA 12 76 2,162,509 28,454 1,854
9. Western Athletic 9 58 1,356,797 23,393 644
10. Sun Belt 9 48 *862,502 17,969 1,506
11. Mid-American 13 74 1,155,099 15,609 293
12. Independents 3 17 887,165 52,186 3,559


http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/...8ffc9080650d5b

[Cyborg13]

So basically the teams with the largest stadiums are on the top of the list...there is more to it than that.

Let me know when (if) anyone can get to 300 consecutive sellouts. At ~86,000 capacity Memorial Stadium is not the largest stadium, but it's not exactly small either. And it's in a small market.

[Mr. GE]

When Nebraska plays football, 5% of the state's population is at the game...

[h152cc2]

Originally Posted by Mr. GE

When Nebraska plays football, 5% of the state's population is at the game...

that doesn't make them good fans
just means there is nothing to do in Nebraska...

you will notice when there are no pro teams around... attendance at college games is much higher (see: Alabama)

That being said, I'd put Nebraska up there in the top of fandom because of the way they treat opposing teams and fans from opposing teams (very well). I don't think "attendance" is a good way to rank the quality of fans

[Mr. GE]

Originally Posted by cyclone8570

you will notice when there are no pro teams around... attendance at college games is much higher (see: Alabama)

The top 3 schools in attendance ALL have professional sports teams near them...

I agree that attendance is NOT the only criteria to determine best fans... but the point was made that loyalty is a factor. So i put the list up so people could see which horrible programs still have tons of fans going to games showing loyalty...

[go_raging_brown]

I think the hands down, best behaved fans would probably be Nebraska. They're loyal, too. Alabama fans in my opinion are the most loyal, but they're pretty rude to other teams and fans.