The Popularity of College Football

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husker70

husker70

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When I am in the car, I listen to College Sports on xm 91. I was looking for some measure of the reach or listenership. In my search I came upon a New York Times article which was attempting to locate College Football Fans. The Study sorts Fans in a Televison Market. If you look at the data you will see New York City has 14% College Football fans, but 20M population for nearly 3 million fans. They go on to break that down as to fans of Rutgers, et al. Now Birmingham, Alabama is off the chart with 85% college football fans. The average is about 25 percent.

There is no listing for the Minneapolis/Saint Paul Market. And all media extends beyond the market. Using the 7 County Metro population of 3,317,308 and the average College Football Fan population of the United States as 25%. There would be 829,327 fans of college football. Now who they are fans of, I cannot say. But it is a significant number. And for anyone to say they have done studies and there is no interest, defies the national data. Even if it was 10% it would be
331,730.

More College Football Coverage at the papers, TV, and radio would capture what is an untested market. Tell me the Star Tribune couldn't, wouldn't want to increase circulation to an untapped 331,730 people

And for those who say nobody goes to the game, I think there is a figure in the data showing us as number 7 in attendance.





http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/the-geography-of-college-football-fans-and-realignment-chaos/?_r=0
 

I think the real question (which would be hard to determine) is the level of intensity for fandom.

Ideally, you would want to classify fans as avid - moderate - or casual levels of interest.

I dare say that, in the Twin Cities market, the number of "hard-core" Gopher Fans would be less than 100,000 - but there could be more moderate or casual fans.

I would guess that a similar ranking of Vikings fans would have a higher # of hard-core fans - but that's just speculation on my part.
 

My observations -- not being presented as empirical: There is no comparison between the level of enthusiasm for college football in pro markets where I've lived (Twin Cities and three others) and non-pro markets where I've lived (four in the South and Midwest). Some of that is the general interest in football being greater in the South, but I believe most of the difference is that the NFL has become so dominant a marketing force that it overwhelms college football wherever they have franchises. Who are the rabid fans in the Big Ten? Nebraska? Iowa? No NFL in either state. All their energy goes to college FB. Most of you are too young to remember a Minnesota before the Vikings invasion. Gopher football was the top program in the state. Now you see four Gopher sweatshirts for sale in Target lost in a sea of purple. Look at the banners on the newspapers' sports pages. Gopher sports are listed after Vikings, Twins, Timberwolves, Wild. No such distractions in college towns. Minnesota has only one BCS team and no FCS teams, yet that one BCS team is the, what?, sixth most followed program in the state?
 




If you look further down in the study, they show Attendance numbers and those who watch or listen. That it the combined number.
 

Whoa Nellie!!! I'm the official clothes guy on this site and I can flat out tell you there is more Gopher gear on people than purple. Now, they might not be Gopher fans but they like the maroon and gold. Anybody that wears purple has to be color blind. Scheels in Fargo goes like this in team apparel:
1. NDSU
2. Gophers
3. Twins
4. Vikings
5. Concordia/MSU
6. Wild
7. Packers
8. T-Wolves
9. North Dakota ( Sioux )
 

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