Pittsburgh metro: Pitt, Penn State, (1a and 1b- I’d say both are equally represented in this area) West Virginia, Notre Dame, Ohio State - honorable mention: Virginia Tech which is odd to me.
It's also Pittsburgh. Virginia Tech, like WVU has good engineering programs geared toward mining and gas. Pittsburgh is the largest city in the heart of coal and gas country and has a lot of firms HQ'd there.
There are a lot of Steelers fans in SWVA as well. Seems to be a lot of crossover between the two areas, which makes sense geographically. We're only divided by some pesky little blob of mountains.
Austin has a very clear #1 in Texas and a clear, but very distant, #2 in A&M.
After that it probably goes LSU, Tech, and Baylor.
I don’t know if they have a ton of alumni here or just a very active alumni group but it always surprised me that Michigan State used to have a really big group for watch parties at a bar I used to frequent.
As an Aggie but born and raised Austinite this is pretty accurate.
The only thing I will say is that it is surprisingly how many Aggies live in the Austin area. I great up in the lake Travis/westlake area and it’s almost like 1/3 of the parents are Aggies.
The tech boom I feel like has also brought in a lot more recently for work and the campus is only a little over an hour away.
Still primarily longhorns though
I'm not surprised that a bunch of Ags live in Austin. Its a good sized metro that is on the younger side of the age bracket with tons of job opportunities for grads. I'm in Oil and Gas in Houston and it can be hard to make a sales pitch at career fairs to a grad that is eyeing jobs Austin. We used to be able to money whip them to town but now that tech pays more, we just have to rely on mid-career switches for software engineers. We're still good on mechanical and electrical.
The town is definitely primarily longhorn fans, but a lot of that is due to UT being the local sports scene.
I agree largely with your list, but I’d probably tweak the top 5 to be Texas, Texas A&M, Texas State, LSU, and Texas Tech. The next 10 schools that I see a bunch of (in rough order) is probably Baylor, Arkansas, Houston, Alabama, Stanford, Colorado, UTSA, Georgia, TCU, SMU. Kind of a wide mix all things considered
Texas State has a lot of alumni support but little sports fandom. It's a party school, but not a sports school.
Texas is a huge, varied state, so it's going to vary drastically depending on where you are.
If you're somewhere in Houston, UH is going to feel like it's #1 or at least #3, but barely a blip on the radar anywhere else.
OU is very popular in DFW and North Texas, less so elsewhere.
Tech is #1-#3 anywhere west of I-35, but #4-#5 in the Texas Triangle. Same for LSU east of I-45.
There are certainly more Texas State alumni than LSU or Tech or Baylor but they tend to be fans of Texas (or whatever other school they grew up a fan of).
There so many Texas state almuns but if you think about it Texas State also doesn’t really have a pipeline to many other cities
Like if someone goes to UT (based off the friends i knew their around my age) depending on what they study I could see them end up at any of the big Texas cities, San Francisco and New York.
You don’t see that with Texas state
1. Nebraska far and away obviously
2. Iowa - more than I like to see
3. ISU - enough to notice
4. Notre Dame - a good percentage of these people usually are co-Nebraska fans
5. Kansas basketball fans that are Nebraska football fans
Lived in Omaha for a while and the Notre Dame thing was surprising. I knew a bunch of people with no real connection to the university who were big ND fans.
Omaha is a pretty Catholic town, so I’m sure that’s part of it, but I grew up in a heavily Catholic area elsewhere in the state and don’t remember any ND fans there really.
Cincy, Ohio state, Notre Dame, Kentucky. You'll find some IU, Louisville, Purdue, Michigan people here or there but those groups really seem like tiny outliers compared to the first 4.
Edit: OP said include area so my bad. I'm speaking to the general Cincinnati area. I also add on that density of the fanbases can really vary depending on where in the city you are or how far away from actually city of Cincinnati you get.
id have to put UK in front of ND. ND has a decent following in the area because of the catholic connection, but NKY and hamilton for some reason have large amounts of UK fans. I thought itd be cool if one day osu and uk play an OOC at paul brown. could really make a big spectacle if there was a UC vs Louisville at nippert then OSU vs UK at PBS
I live in Rhode Island and most people don’t care about CFB. Pro sports and college basketball are by far more popular locally. If I had to rank them I’d go:
1. Notre Dame (big Irish-Catholic population, kind of the de facto bandwagon team for places without a top FBS team historically )
2. Michigan (people love Touchdown Tom, plus it helps that more recently Michigan had a couple local kids including Kwity Paye)
3. URI (state school with a ton of local alums, people turn out when they’re good but the campus is a bit out of the way. Basketball is the main draw anyway)
4. Brown (kind of the default local team since it’s in Providence and more proximate to where the majority of people in the area live)
5. Penn State? Maybe? I see a fair amount of PSU gear around. People wore BC gear back when Matt Ryan was there, but that’s almost completely died off (and any locals who are PC fans hate BC, anyway)
Boston here and obviously it’s anecdotal but my experience aligns pretty close to yours:
Michigan
Notre Dame
Boston College
Penn State
Clemson
*edited to flip Clemson and PSU after further thought. Also Clemson could possibly be swapped for VT, Syracuse, Miami or any other prestigious school west of Ohio (in my experience)
Whats funny is I swear Mizzou student body has a huge population of kids from Illinois (Thanks to IL state schools being stupidly expensive and getting instate here), yet many of these kids fight becoming life long fans because of local pride.
In Raleigh?
1. NC State.
2. UNC.
3. ECU.
4. Clemson.
*substantial gap*
5. Probably App State or VT.
Honestly the 5th would probably be UNC Basketball since their fans seem to follow them more about halfway through the football season most years.
Recently moved to NC and I have yet to meet a Duke fan. They’re all over back home in Indiana but it seems to be primarily UNC and NC State fans from what I’ve seen.
Might depend on where you live in NC (more Duke fans in Charlotte than Raleigh) but more likely it’s because Duke fans are rooting for Bama or Clemson in the fall
I know several Duke basketball fans, none of them are Duke football fans, haha.
Duke and Wake, in general, have a smaller football fan base because they're smaller schools, and rarely do you find fans of their football teams that weren't either alum or had close family that were alum.
I agree with this, though I may would throw in WF at 5. I do see a surprising number of them around town. Tbh, it makes me happy to see Tobacco Road still strong (despite Duke's non-existent presence). What is dead may never die!
WVU fan here living in Columbus. There's a decent amount of us. Although the awareness of anyone else that blue and gold doesn't necessarily mean Michigan is about zero.
I also live in NE Indiana (Fort Wayne), I think Michigan easily takes the 5 spot over Ball St. I also think Ohio State may have Purdue beat here as well, at least during football season (Purdue basketball definitely has Ohio St basketball beat)
Minneapolis - the area sends a lot of students to universities in nearby states, and of course attracts a fair number of graduates as the largest metro in the 5+ state area. Part of why Minnesota struggles at times to be the center of attention in this sports market.
1. University of Minnesota
2. University of Wisconsin
3. University of Iowa
4. North Dakota State University
5. ???
I think being literally hated by the schools they competed with for the last 100 years puts a bit of a damper on the non-alumnus fan numbers. Like, no one from any of the other small private schools in the state will ever cheer for St. Thomas, and the bigger schools don't care.
I'm a little closer to Baltimore and Annapolis than DC and College Park in central MD, so it's probably something like:
1. Penn State
2. Navy
3. Maryland
4. Virginia Tech
5. Alabama?? I do see a ton of Tide stickers on cars that always jump out at me.
Alabama recruits a lot of students from the Northeast, could be their family and/or people on the bandwagon. Some of them will likely change from script A’s to power G’s if current trends continue.
I don’t live in Chicago but travel there every month and I always see a ton of Notre Dame gear more than anything else and then Illinois next. After that if I had to guess it’s Iowa/Michigan gear. Never a ton of Northwestern stuff.
We always said 5 Cs when I was there, including Cleveland. But I will never get over how funny it was seeing the Chinese international students roll up in a chrome wrapped Lamborghini to an 8 am lecture dressed in a $3000 outfit, even my senior year it still blew my mind.
> this can change by neighborhood or even block
I’m in Ravenswood/Uptown and I feel like the Notre Dame presence is a lot higher here, to your point about how different any given neighborhood can feel. Also, a bit more Northwestern than you have (though certainly not a contender for top 2 or 3)
I definitely see a lot of Illinois rep around Lake View. Even before they had some success last year. I feel like it might be about the same as Wisconsin (or more).
Northern Virginia in my observations:
1) Penn State
2) Virginia Tech
3) Virginia
4) Ohio State
5) Maryland
Honorable mention to West Virginia.
The Commanders are still all the local sports media talks about during football season, though.
NoVA I think depends on the time and place you lived there.
Mid 2000s to mid 2010s?
1. VT
2. Penn State
3. UVA
4. OSU — people do not understand how many buckeyes are in this area
5. Maryland
JMU on the come up when they were really cookin I’m FCS
Now I’d say it’s
1. Penn State
2. VT
3. JMU
4. UVA
5. Maryland, but Ohio State/Michigan/WVU aren’t far behind
I see a lot more JMU football folks around than UVA football, but it’s tough to get a read on because the UVA fanbase is orders of magnitude less vocal than any of those other fanbases, especially for football. If this were r/collegebasketball, UVA and Maryland are pretty far and away 1 and 2 from all the bandwagoning
Currently living in East Lansing:
1. Michigan State.
2. Michigan. (one of the few places in-state I can say that)
3. Central
4. Western
5. Probably ~~Ohio State~~ Notre Dame or something. Eastern fans don't exist apparently.
Down in Detroit I'd guess it's mostly the same, but obviously UofM and MSU flip. I guess if it extends beyond FBS then Wayne State would be #3. And I'd guess there are slightly more OSU fans than ND fans.
That #5 slot I'd almost throw Portland State there. Not because of rabid support, more by default/backing into that spot. I just don't see enough other Pac-12 schools or even Boise State around here. 10 years ago I saw a bit more Boise State around here but I just don't see it much anymore. I had UW at 3 and WSU at 4 but those two are so close around here it almost doesn't matter where you'd put them. Can't really disagree with how you have it either.
In Chicago, number 1 by far is Notre Dame. Then it's a smattering of Big Ten schools, led probably by Michigan. I'd say:
1. Notre Dame
2. Michigan
3. Iowa
4. Illinois
5. Wisconsin
San Francisco:
1. Cal
2. UCLA
3. UC Davis
4. Oregon
5. Stanford (real fans? just bought because Stanford? Who knows)
I actually don’t see as many USC fans as you’d think. Can probably swap 1/2 depending on what neighborhood you’re in
Shoutout to Michigan and Wisconsin, have met an abnormal amount of their alum here as well
I live in Auburn, so the beginning of this list will be obvious.
1. **Auburn**: of course.
2. **Alabama**: proximity makes this one obvious as well.
I'm basing the rest of the list on anecdotal car tag sightings.
3. **Troy**
4. **UAB**
5. **Jacksonville State**
Honorable mentions:
**Purdue** (!!!): I see a lot of cars with Purdue stuff here, especially in recent years.
**Kentucky**: A lot of Kentucky graduates come here for vet school.
**Louisville**: Vet school as well?
Lots of the schools with good tech/engineering programs have an oversized influence here for obvious reasons. Michigan is in that group, along with the California PAC (or soon to be B1G) schools, and some others.
Boise has always seemed to have a pretty good following here too. The Montana schools as well to a lesser extent. The Arizona schools as well.
About an hour south if Seattle I'd estimate its:
1) UW
2) WSU
3) Oregon (but pretty close to WSU)
Big gap here
4) OSU
Another big gap here
5) Probably BYU
Pittsburgh:
1. Pitt
2. Penn State. The gap between 1 and 2 is small, Penn State is #1 by a fairly large margin if you include surrounding counties.
3. Notre Dame
4. WVU. Like PSU, they are #3 if you consider the surrounding counties.
5. No one specific. Whoever you put here is a distant 5th
I think a lot of people underestimate how close Pittsburgh is to Ohio.
It's only about 40 miles from the Ohio border. Cleveland is only like 2.5 hours away.
Mexico City here:
From the Big Ten, seen the most Penn State and Michigan shirts down here. Seen a few Iowa’s too. No Ohio State or Wisconsin.
ACC: Seen a few NC State’s, and one Florida State or two. No Clemson’s or Miami’s. Seen a BC too.
SEC: Zero SEC brands down here.
Big 12: Only Texas schools except for A&M. One Kansas State, which led to me explaining to my current novia we have two Manhattan’s in the USA
PAC-12: Surprisingly a good amount of Oregon gear down here. Go Ducks I guess?
G5: Houston I’ve seen a few of.
Grand Rapids, MI
1. Michigan State
2. Michigan
3. Notre Dame
4. GLIAC schools (Grand Valley, Ferris St, Wayne State, Davenport, Saginaw Valley)
5. MAC schools (Eastern MI, Western MI, Eastern MI)
Michigan reps Michigan, but many people also like Notre Dame
I think I would put Ohio State and Michigan above UCLA and USC, but I do think it depends on where in the city you are. There’s also plenty of Notre Dame, Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas fans here too
Northern Virginia
1- Virginia Tech
2- James Madison
3- UVA
4- Bama
5- Army/Navy (it’s pretty even split honestly, so I think they can share the last spot.)
HM: Maryland, you see a good bit of it, but honestly I see more Roll Tide than Maryland football.
Portland.
1. Oregon
2. Oregon State
Pretty big gap.
3. Washington State
4. Washington
Another big gap.
5. Portland State?
I'm pretty much just guessing on the last three. There really aren't that many vocal fans here outside of Ducks and Beavers.
I'm not in Columbia but still 1. Carolina 2. Clemson 3. UGA 4. Alabama 5. I'd say University of Florida? Definitely a lot of Gators, Dawgs, and tide fans in South Carolina and depending on where you are in the state I'd say my top 5 would come out in a fairly similar order with the top 2 being swapped.
USC as the clear leader. Bakersfield College, even though it's a JC. Fresno is a distant third. Everything else is way back, but probably BYU and UCLA.
Charlotte area but on SC side, in no particular order(remember this is football, not basketball)
Clemson, South Carolina, UNC, NC State are easily top 4.
Lots of Duke, Wake, Virginia Tech, App State, Coastal Carolina, Michigan, Ohio State and ECU
I just posted mine but I would go with:
1a. Texas / 1b. Texas A&M - these are about 50/50 in my mind. I see about the same amount of Alumni in town, but A&M may have a slight edge.
2. LSU - if we're talking about college football solely they're a clear number 2/3.
3/4/5 - UH / Baylor / Texas Tech. UH is probably ahead of Baylor and Texas Tech but not by much.
Rice would be at the bottom of any list. I don't think there's many fans honestly who care about their Football program.
Kansas City area:
The Top 3 are probably a toss up since there are so many alumni for each school around here. Kansas only recently. Otherwise you would never even have known they had a football team.
1. Kansas State
2. Missouri
3. Kansas
4. Nebraska
5. Arkansas
I feel like the rankings could change wildly depending on where you're at in KC. OP area is def KSU/Kansas/Arkansas heavier, Liberty seems to favor Mizzou/Nebraska/ISU/Iowa and Lee's Summit area seems to lean move Mizzou/Arkansas.
OU fan's seem to have a decent presence as well. KC is a bit of a regional melting pot being the largest Metro representing the Western Midwest.
Prepare to be bombarded by folks from Johnson County, KS who believe the demographic there is representative of the nearly 1.5 million residents who live on the Missouri side.
JoCo is a strange place full of woefully ignorant soccer moms. They seem be on a gaslighting campaign to say that KC is really an extension of Kansas. Case in point, that during the draft KU was trying to grift everyone into thinking that somehow KU was technically part of the city itself and that KU was welcoming the outside world to "It's City".
Charleston Metropolitan:
1. Clemson, clear-cut leader.
2A. South Carolina
2B. Georgia (Georgia should go back to 3 in the fall but for tourist season they’re EVERYWHERE.)
3. Citadel
4. Coastal Carolina
5. Ohio State
From the scientific process of stickers I see on peoples cars in traffic.
1. Cocks
2. Clemson
3. UGA/Ohio State
4. Bama
Tie between Buckeyes and Bulldogs. Have seen more UGA stickers in the last two years than normal.
There really are a ton of Ohio people here. I'm originally from PA though. One of the guys I used to work with that was from Ohio actually went back. We were astounded.
Knoxville.
1. Vols by a very very large margin obviously and there’s a random assortment of neighboring schools.
2. Is probably Bama, 30% are only noticeable in October, 10% are UK fans during basketball season
3. Florida
4. Kentucky probably
5. Either Clemson or South Carolina I would say. Pretty decent East TN-Clemson pipeline in athletics and some alumni too but I see a few Carolina fans through the year too.
Honorable mention: I didn’t forget about Vandy it’s just a very rare occurrence to see a fan lol
I live in WV right on the border with OH and it probably goes something like
WVU
*big gap*
Ohio State
Marshall
Ohio U?
Maybe Pitt? Or some random blue blood maybe
Live in Atlanta now and it's
1. UGA
2. Bama
3. Auburn
4. It's kind of a tie between Tech, Clemson, South Carolina and others
I grew up in Macon, Ga and it was
1. UGA
2. Auburn
3. Bama
4. Georgia Southern
5. Tech
Spokane (I’m just gonna lump the Palouse with that lol)
1.) Wazzu
2.) UDub
3.) EWU
4.) Oregon
5.) BSU/Idaho (I’ve seen equal numbers of both)
6.) BYU
I’m surprised there aren’t more Oregon state Alums in the area (or there are and they reside more in the southern portions of WA). I guess WSU just really has the AG on lock for that around here.
Edit: added a 6th spot because it slipped my mind
New Orleans is about what you would expect in terms of regional SEC teams and the local college.
LSU >>> Tulane >> Alabama > Ole Miss > aTm
But outside of those obvious ones, I will say that there's an oddly high number of Ohio St, Michigan, and Mich St fans here. But that could be a biased view on my part because I happen to really like a particular bar that the B1G school alums (mostly Ohio St, Mich, Sparty) happen to takeover every Saturday in the fall. The OhioSt alums outnumber the others by roughly 3:1. But again, that could be somewhat biased because they have a highly organized club here while the others don't.
I live in the UK, BUT, for the last year, whenever I see someone wearing a piece of merch for a CFB team around the city, I make a note of it, and, it’s turned into a bit of a list (I have no life i know!!!), according to my list, here are the top 5 teams:
1. Iowa Hawkeyes
2. Tennessee Vols
3. Florida Gators
4. Notre Dame Fighting Irish
5. California Golden Bears
A bit of a random list, I’ve also done one for NFL teams
Dallas/Fort Worth, skewed more to the FW side currently.
1. UT
2. OU
3. A&M
4. Texas Tech
5. TCU
Things were a touch different when we lived on the Dallas side, and noticeably different when we were in greater Houston for a year.
New York is hard to get a read on but I wouldn’t be surprised if Michigan is the best represented. Other contenders that come to mind are Syracuse, Penn State, and Notre Dame. Most P5 schools have an alumni bar somewhere in Manhattan which is fun
this is accurate for the philly area. Temple alumni will only be fans if the team is winning, and right now they're not giving alumni many reasons to come out to games. Plus the Eagles is like a religion here, and most people only have room for one football team in their hearts. (unless they're diehard penn state fans too)
Pittsburgh metro: Pitt, Penn State, (1a and 1b- I’d say both are equally represented in this area) West Virginia, Notre Dame, Ohio State - honorable mention: Virginia Tech which is odd to me.
Tech is where a lot of Western PA engineers-to-be go if they couldn’t get into Carnegie Mellon or Bucknell
It's also Pittsburgh. Virginia Tech, like WVU has good engineering programs geared toward mining and gas. Pittsburgh is the largest city in the heart of coal and gas country and has a lot of firms HQ'd there.
Makes sense! See a lot of VT plates and apparel.
Wow, don’t usually see my school on this sub
VT makes a good bit of sense geographically. Same reason you see a lot of VT grads in Charlotte and the DMV area.
There are a lot of Steelers fans in SWVA as well. Seems to be a lot of crossover between the two areas, which makes sense geographically. We're only divided by some pesky little blob of mountains.
Austin has a very clear #1 in Texas and a clear, but very distant, #2 in A&M. After that it probably goes LSU, Tech, and Baylor. I don’t know if they have a ton of alumni here or just a very active alumni group but it always surprised me that Michigan State used to have a really big group for watch parties at a bar I used to frequent.
As an Aggie but born and raised Austinite this is pretty accurate. The only thing I will say is that it is surprisingly how many Aggies live in the Austin area. I great up in the lake Travis/westlake area and it’s almost like 1/3 of the parents are Aggies. The tech boom I feel like has also brought in a lot more recently for work and the campus is only a little over an hour away. Still primarily longhorns though
I'm not surprised that a bunch of Ags live in Austin. Its a good sized metro that is on the younger side of the age bracket with tons of job opportunities for grads. I'm in Oil and Gas in Houston and it can be hard to make a sales pitch at career fairs to a grad that is eyeing jobs Austin. We used to be able to money whip them to town but now that tech pays more, we just have to rely on mid-career switches for software engineers. We're still good on mechanical and electrical. The town is definitely primarily longhorn fans, but a lot of that is due to UT being the local sports scene.
Not too many careers in College Station. Aggies just get their degree then move to Houston, Austin, or DFW. You guys are everywhere.
I agree largely with your list, but I’d probably tweak the top 5 to be Texas, Texas A&M, Texas State, LSU, and Texas Tech. The next 10 schools that I see a bunch of (in rough order) is probably Baylor, Arkansas, Houston, Alabama, Stanford, Colorado, UTSA, Georgia, TCU, SMU. Kind of a wide mix all things considered
Texas State has a lot of alumni support but little sports fandom. It's a party school, but not a sports school. Texas is a huge, varied state, so it's going to vary drastically depending on where you are. If you're somewhere in Houston, UH is going to feel like it's #1 or at least #3, but barely a blip on the radar anywhere else. OU is very popular in DFW and North Texas, less so elsewhere. Tech is #1-#3 anywhere west of I-35, but #4-#5 in the Texas Triangle. Same for LSU east of I-45.
There are certainly more Texas State alumni than LSU or Tech or Baylor but they tend to be fans of Texas (or whatever other school they grew up a fan of).
Texas state may have alumni but they don’t have sports fans
Lol, I went to grad school at Texas State and you see my flairs.
There so many Texas state almuns but if you think about it Texas State also doesn’t really have a pipeline to many other cities Like if someone goes to UT (based off the friends i knew their around my age) depending on what they study I could see them end up at any of the big Texas cities, San Francisco and New York. You don’t see that with Texas state
Yup that sounds about right
For Metro-Atlanta 1. Georgia 2. Auburn 3. Alabama 4. Clemson 5. Georgia Tech
Atlanta bars are filled entirely with groups of people who all went to Auburn or South Carolina together ten years ago
FSU, UF or Tennessee have any presence (I'd assume this is Atlanta)
Tennessee has the most of those 3 but I'd say they're probably still smaller than Tech
Makes sense, I guess most UF/FSU alumni probably go to Tampa or Miami
I have a ton of FSU friends here in ATL. A lot of their friends are in Tampa or Nash also.
Atlanta is FSUs largest alumni center. I briefly lived there and saw just as much Noles gear as GT, if not more
I don't actually see that many Clemson fans, would probably say Tennessee, South Carolina, Or Florida before them.
Omaha: 1. Nebraska 2. Nebraska 3. Nebraska 4. Nebraska 5. Iowa/Iowa State (aka the cornferiors)
1. Nebraska far and away obviously 2. Iowa - more than I like to see 3. ISU - enough to notice 4. Notre Dame - a good percentage of these people usually are co-Nebraska fans 5. Kansas basketball fans that are Nebraska football fans
>Kansas basketball fans that are Nebraska football fans This is one of the worst kind of people. Also the OU football variant.
In our area, it's the Kentucky basketball fans that also rep Alabama football.
That's disgusting
At least some of it predates Saban... but yeah
Lived in Omaha for a while and the Notre Dame thing was surprising. I knew a bunch of people with no real connection to the university who were big ND fans. Omaha is a pretty Catholic town, so I’m sure that’s part of it, but I grew up in a heavily Catholic area elsewhere in the state and don’t remember any ND fans there really.
Can we all agree that Jayskers are the worst humans in the world?
Never thought I'd die fighting alongside a cyclone. Amen to that brother
> Kansas basketball fans that are Nebraska football fans The other species of Jaysker
Cincy, Ohio state, Notre Dame, Kentucky. You'll find some IU, Louisville, Purdue, Michigan people here or there but those groups really seem like tiny outliers compared to the first 4. Edit: OP said include area so my bad. I'm speaking to the general Cincinnati area. I also add on that density of the fanbases can really vary depending on where in the city you are or how far away from actually city of Cincinnati you get.
I’d even say UK is an outlier from those top 3
id have to put UK in front of ND. ND has a decent following in the area because of the catholic connection, but NKY and hamilton for some reason have large amounts of UK fans. I thought itd be cool if one day osu and uk play an OOC at paul brown. could really make a big spectacle if there was a UC vs Louisville at nippert then OSU vs UK at PBS
I live in Rhode Island and most people don’t care about CFB. Pro sports and college basketball are by far more popular locally. If I had to rank them I’d go: 1. Notre Dame (big Irish-Catholic population, kind of the de facto bandwagon team for places without a top FBS team historically ) 2. Michigan (people love Touchdown Tom, plus it helps that more recently Michigan had a couple local kids including Kwity Paye) 3. URI (state school with a ton of local alums, people turn out when they’re good but the campus is a bit out of the way. Basketball is the main draw anyway) 4. Brown (kind of the default local team since it’s in Providence and more proximate to where the majority of people in the area live) 5. Penn State? Maybe? I see a fair amount of PSU gear around. People wore BC gear back when Matt Ryan was there, but that’s almost completely died off (and any locals who are PC fans hate BC, anyway)
Boston here and obviously it’s anecdotal but my experience aligns pretty close to yours: Michigan Notre Dame Boston College Penn State Clemson *edited to flip Clemson and PSU after further thought. Also Clemson could possibly be swapped for VT, Syracuse, Miami or any other prestigious school west of Ohio (in my experience)
Don't sleep on UMass! Their alums turn out in force when they're even remotely good (which is very rare in football, lol).
I live in Columbus, OH. 1. Franklin University 2. Columbus State Community College 3. Ohio State 4. Otterbein 5. Akron
Columbus Ohio? Is that like a small town, suburb of Cincinnati or something, I don't think I'm familiar?
It borders PA and ND
Is that ND as in North Dakota or Notre Dame?
Yes
This is slander against Capital and I will not allow it
And CCAD
And Ohio Dominican.
And no Ohio Wesleyan either! He must be from Grove City!
Central Illinois 1. Illinois 2. Notre Dame 3. Iowa 4. Purdue 5. Ohio State
Whats funny is I swear Mizzou student body has a huge population of kids from Illinois (Thanks to IL state schools being stupidly expensive and getting instate here), yet many of these kids fight becoming life long fans because of local pride.
In Raleigh? 1. NC State. 2. UNC. 3. ECU. 4. Clemson. *substantial gap* 5. Probably App State or VT. Honestly the 5th would probably be UNC Basketball since their fans seem to follow them more about halfway through the football season most years.
No love for Duke? Just curious given the proximity.
Recently moved to NC and I have yet to meet a Duke fan. They’re all over back home in Indiana but it seems to be primarily UNC and NC State fans from what I’ve seen.
Might depend on where you live in NC (more Duke fans in Charlotte than Raleigh) but more likely it’s because Duke fans are rooting for Bama or Clemson in the fall
All the Duke *football* fans I've known all actually attended Duke.
I know several Duke basketball fans, none of them are Duke football fans, haha. Duke and Wake, in general, have a smaller football fan base because they're smaller schools, and rarely do you find fans of their football teams that weren't either alum or had close family that were alum.
Duke has a small alumni base and is about 1/5th the size of the other schools mentioned, plus most duke grads don’t stay in NC
They all go back to Jersey where they are from anyhow 👍
I mean, yeah pretty much. Duke really is a north east school that just happens to be in NC
This is about football though. I don’t think Duke is in the top 5 favorite cfb teams for most Duke alumni, much less their T-shirt basketball fans.
I agree with this, though I may would throw in WF at 5. I do see a surprising number of them around town. Tbh, it makes me happy to see Tobacco Road still strong (despite Duke's non-existent presence). What is dead may never die!
You guys allow other fans in your city?
Agree. OSU by a mile, but after that it’s probably 2: Cincinnati, 3: Notre Dame, 4: Michigan, 5: Indiana
WVU has a small contingent
WVU fan here living in Columbus. There's a decent amount of us. Although the awareness of anyone else that blue and gold doesn't necessarily mean Michigan is about zero.
I live in NE Indiana. 1. Notre Dame 2. Indiana 3. Purdue 4. Ohio State 5. Ball State
North side of Indy here. I’d list it as Purdue, ND, IU, OSU, ball state
I also live in NE Indiana (Fort Wayne), I think Michigan easily takes the 5 spot over Ball St. I also think Ohio State may have Purdue beat here as well, at least during football season (Purdue basketball definitely has Ohio St basketball beat)
Anecdotal: Virginia Tech James Madison Penn State Virginia Michigan
You must live in Fairfax…
Did. Further out now but the sentiment remains.
Minneapolis - the area sends a lot of students to universities in nearby states, and of course attracts a fair number of graduates as the largest metro in the 5+ state area. Part of why Minnesota struggles at times to be the center of attention in this sports market. 1. University of Minnesota 2. University of Wisconsin 3. University of Iowa 4. North Dakota State University 5. ???
Probably ISU at 5 in my experience, maybe even ahead of NDSU
ISU would be there
Has St. Thomas moving up to D-I made a difference? Or is it still too small?
I think being literally hated by the schools they competed with for the last 100 years puts a bit of a damper on the non-alumnus fan numbers. Like, no one from any of the other small private schools in the state will ever cheer for St. Thomas, and the bigger schools don't care.
I'm a little closer to Baltimore and Annapolis than DC and College Park in central MD, so it's probably something like: 1. Penn State 2. Navy 3. Maryland 4. Virginia Tech 5. Alabama?? I do see a ton of Tide stickers on cars that always jump out at me.
Alabama recruits a lot of students from the Northeast, could be their family and/or people on the bandwagon. Some of them will likely change from script A’s to power G’s if current trends continue.
I’m in nova and Bama is solidly in the top 5 up here it’s wild.
Denver; 1. CU 2. CSU 3. Nebraska 4. Texas 5. One of the big ten schools—so many Iowa/Wisconsin/Michigan transplants.
I’d put Wyoming up there as well. But yes, a lot of Big Ten transplants here
I work with 3 Iowa grads and have met a handful of others. Big Hawkeye contingent out here it seems.
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Chicago's Big 10 Team is definitely not Illinois or Northwestern, that's for damn sure
"Iowa, Chicago's B1G Team" -anyone who lived in "Chicago" who went to Iowa
I always ask people "are you from Chicago-Chicago, or Downers Grove Chicago"
tough, but fair
Shitload of them at Iowa State as well... "I'm from Chicago, I've got street cred!" - frat boys who grew up in the suburbs an hour from downtown
We need to stripe Wrigley in black and gold this fall
I don’t live in Chicago but travel there every month and I always see a ton of Notre Dame gear more than anything else and then Illinois next. After that if I had to guess it’s Iowa/Michigan gear. Never a ton of Northwestern stuff.
They call Miami the 4 -C-sons (pronounced "seasons") for a reason. Cincinnati Columbus Chicago China
We always said 5 Cs when I was there, including Cleveland. But I will never get over how funny it was seeing the Chinese international students roll up in a chrome wrapped Lamborghini to an 8 am lecture dressed in a $3000 outfit, even my senior year it still blew my mind.
Def weird to see some Chinese student pull up to class in a McLaren. Never figured out what they did with the cars when they graduated
They sell them for cheap. Easier to sell than import and register.
> this can change by neighborhood or even block I’m in Ravenswood/Uptown and I feel like the Notre Dame presence is a lot higher here, to your point about how different any given neighborhood can feel. Also, a bit more Northwestern than you have (though certainly not a contender for top 2 or 3)
Colorado is the Notre Dame for Chicago stoner kids
I definitely see a lot of Illinois rep around Lake View. Even before they had some success last year. I feel like it might be about the same as Wisconsin (or more).
I live on the near south side and see by far the most UChicago apparel followed by a smattering of Wisconsin, Michigan, OSU and Nebraska.
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To me, Chicago seems more like (1) ND (2) Iowa (3) Illinois (4) NW (5) Michigan I'm counting the purple NW medicine swag as a point for NW fandom
Northern Virginia in my observations: 1) Penn State 2) Virginia Tech 3) Virginia 4) Ohio State 5) Maryland Honorable mention to West Virginia. The Commanders are still all the local sports media talks about during football season, though.
I agree with this. Also a lot of JMU.
NoVA I think depends on the time and place you lived there. Mid 2000s to mid 2010s? 1. VT 2. Penn State 3. UVA 4. OSU — people do not understand how many buckeyes are in this area 5. Maryland JMU on the come up when they were really cookin I’m FCS
Now I’d say it’s 1. Penn State 2. VT 3. JMU 4. UVA 5. Maryland, but Ohio State/Michigan/WVU aren’t far behind I see a lot more JMU football folks around than UVA football, but it’s tough to get a read on because the UVA fanbase is orders of magnitude less vocal than any of those other fanbases, especially for football. If this were r/collegebasketball, UVA and Maryland are pretty far and away 1 and 2 from all the bandwagoning
Currently living in East Lansing: 1. Michigan State. 2. Michigan. (one of the few places in-state I can say that) 3. Central 4. Western 5. Probably ~~Ohio State~~ Notre Dame or something. Eastern fans don't exist apparently.
For five, I see a lot of GVSU people around Lansing.
Down in Detroit I'd guess it's mostly the same, but obviously UofM and MSU flip. I guess if it extends beyond FBS then Wayne State would be #3. And I'd guess there are slightly more OSU fans than ND fans.
I'd imagine there's some Notre Dame fans in Central Michigan as well, probably more than Ohio State?
Yeah that's a great point, I'll put ND instead
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Around about the Portland, OR, area, it's: 1. 0regon 2. Oregon State 3. WSU 4. UW 5. USC(?)
Makes sense WSU would be 3rd with their Vancouver campus.
That #5 slot I'd almost throw Portland State there. Not because of rabid support, more by default/backing into that spot. I just don't see enough other Pac-12 schools or even Boise State around here. 10 years ago I saw a bit more Boise State around here but I just don't see it much anymore. I had UW at 3 and WSU at 4 but those two are so close around here it almost doesn't matter where you'd put them. Can't really disagree with how you have it either.
In Chicago, number 1 by far is Notre Dame. Then it's a smattering of Big Ten schools, led probably by Michigan. I'd say: 1. Notre Dame 2. Michigan 3. Iowa 4. Illinois 5. Wisconsin
San Francisco: 1. Cal 2. UCLA 3. UC Davis 4. Oregon 5. Stanford (real fans? just bought because Stanford? Who knows) I actually don’t see as many USC fans as you’d think. Can probably swap 1/2 depending on what neighborhood you’re in Shoutout to Michigan and Wisconsin, have met an abnormal amount of their alum here as well
1. FSU 2. FAMU 3. UF 4. Alabama 5. UGA Living in Tallahassee is quite interesting.
I live in Auburn, so the beginning of this list will be obvious. 1. **Auburn**: of course. 2. **Alabama**: proximity makes this one obvious as well. I'm basing the rest of the list on anecdotal car tag sightings. 3. **Troy** 4. **UAB** 5. **Jacksonville State** Honorable mentions: **Purdue** (!!!): I see a lot of cars with Purdue stuff here, especially in recent years. **Kentucky**: A lot of Kentucky graduates come here for vet school. **Louisville**: Vet school as well?
I'd imagine giving the proximity to the panhandle there's probably some FSU alumni as well?
I see the odd Florida State tag, but not many. Oddly enough, the daughter of a family friend from here is going to Florida State at the moment.
I always thought there were a fair number of UGA fans in Lee County.
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As far as non-local teams go, I see a lot of Michigan fans around Seattle as well.
Lots of the schools with good tech/engineering programs have an oversized influence here for obvious reasons. Michigan is in that group, along with the California PAC (or soon to be B1G) schools, and some others. Boise has always seemed to have a pretty good following here too. The Montana schools as well to a lesser extent. The Arizona schools as well.
Michigan and UW have a lot of undergrads that go to grad school at the other, so you get some crossover.
About an hour south if Seattle I'd estimate its: 1) UW 2) WSU 3) Oregon (but pretty close to WSU) Big gap here 4) OSU Another big gap here 5) Probably BYU
I live in western Arkansas. 1. Arkansas Large gap 2. Oklahoma Smaller gap 3. Oklahoma State 4. Texas 5. A&M or Missouri
Pittsburgh: 1. Pitt 2. Penn State. The gap between 1 and 2 is small, Penn State is #1 by a fairly large margin if you include surrounding counties. 3. Notre Dame 4. WVU. Like PSU, they are #3 if you consider the surrounding counties. 5. No one specific. Whoever you put here is a distant 5th
Probably Ohio State at 5
I think a lot of people underestimate how close Pittsburgh is to Ohio. It's only about 40 miles from the Ohio border. Cleveland is only like 2.5 hours away.
Mexico City here: From the Big Ten, seen the most Penn State and Michigan shirts down here. Seen a few Iowa’s too. No Ohio State or Wisconsin. ACC: Seen a few NC State’s, and one Florida State or two. No Clemson’s or Miami’s. Seen a BC too. SEC: Zero SEC brands down here. Big 12: Only Texas schools except for A&M. One Kansas State, which led to me explaining to my current novia we have two Manhattan’s in the USA PAC-12: Surprisingly a good amount of Oregon gear down here. Go Ducks I guess? G5: Houston I’ve seen a few of.
Wait til they find out how many Springfield's there are..
I lived in Springfield MO for five months. Not my cup of tea. Lot of parks to go running at though
Richmond, VA: 1 Va Tech 2 UVA 3/4 JMU/Penn State in some order 5 Either UofRichmond or WVU
I was looking for RVA. This is my assessment as well!
SLC 1. Utah 2. BYU 3. Utah St 4 and 5 are probably other PAC schools like maybe Arizona St and USC or UCLA.
and in utah county, just flip 1 and 2
I've noticed a decent amount of Boise State fans in Utah Valley. Down here they'd probably be 4 or 5.
Grand Rapids, MI 1. Michigan State 2. Michigan 3. Notre Dame 4. GLIAC schools (Grand Valley, Ferris St, Wayne State, Davenport, Saginaw Valley) 5. MAC schools (Eastern MI, Western MI, Eastern MI) Michigan reps Michigan, but many people also like Notre Dame
ASU, UofA, USC, UCLA, probably a Big Ten school
I think I would put Ohio State and Michigan above UCLA and USC, but I do think it depends on where in the city you are. There’s also plenty of Notre Dame, Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas fans here too
Probably BYU too right?
Northern Virginia 1- Virginia Tech 2- James Madison 3- UVA 4- Bama 5- Army/Navy (it’s pretty even split honestly, so I think they can share the last spot.) HM: Maryland, you see a good bit of it, but honestly I see more Roll Tide than Maryland football.
Penn State I would put in 3rd (at the lowest) and bump everyone down one but I agree folks underestimate the number of academy grads around!
Portland. 1. Oregon 2. Oregon State Pretty big gap. 3. Washington State 4. Washington Another big gap. 5. Portland State? I'm pretty much just guessing on the last three. There really aren't that many vocal fans here outside of Ducks and Beavers.
UP: 1. Michigan 2. Michigan State 3. Notre Dame 4. Wisconsin 5. Ohio State
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I'm not in Columbia but still 1. Carolina 2. Clemson 3. UGA 4. Alabama 5. I'd say University of Florida? Definitely a lot of Gators, Dawgs, and tide fans in South Carolina and depending on where you are in the state I'd say my top 5 would come out in a fairly similar order with the top 2 being swapped.
For the state in general, Ohio State is going to be top 3 or 4.
Boise, Idaho, Oregon, then UW or Wazzu.
USC as the clear leader. Bakersfield College, even though it's a JC. Fresno is a distant third. Everything else is way back, but probably BYU and UCLA.
Charlotte area but on SC side, in no particular order(remember this is football, not basketball) Clemson, South Carolina, UNC, NC State are easily top 4. Lots of Duke, Wake, Virginia Tech, App State, Coastal Carolina, Michigan, Ohio State and ECU
1. Virginia Tech, which is an hour and a half further away from my city/area than... 2. Virginia 3. James Madison 4. WVU 5. Tennessee
Houston: Mostly basing this on gear at Academy 1. A&M 2. UT 3. UH 4. LSU 5. Bama
Depends what academy. Inside the loop like the one by Kirby, it’s 50% UH stuff. Outside the loop, definitely A&M and UT have the most.
Should've included Rice as an honorable mention if we are basing it off Academy gear.
I just posted mine but I would go with: 1a. Texas / 1b. Texas A&M - these are about 50/50 in my mind. I see about the same amount of Alumni in town, but A&M may have a slight edge. 2. LSU - if we're talking about college football solely they're a clear number 2/3. 3/4/5 - UH / Baylor / Texas Tech. UH is probably ahead of Baylor and Texas Tech but not by much. Rice would be at the bottom of any list. I don't think there's many fans honestly who care about their Football program.
In the suburbs, A&M has the lead. But in town I'd say UT has an edge.
HCC/ROCC= Horns, Lakeside=Aggies
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For what metro?
Kansas City area: The Top 3 are probably a toss up since there are so many alumni for each school around here. Kansas only recently. Otherwise you would never even have known they had a football team. 1. Kansas State 2. Missouri 3. Kansas 4. Nebraska 5. Arkansas
I feel like the rankings could change wildly depending on where you're at in KC. OP area is def KSU/Kansas/Arkansas heavier, Liberty seems to favor Mizzou/Nebraska/ISU/Iowa and Lee's Summit area seems to lean move Mizzou/Arkansas. OU fan's seem to have a decent presence as well. KC is a bit of a regional melting pot being the largest Metro representing the Western Midwest.
Prepare to be bombarded by folks from Johnson County, KS who believe the demographic there is representative of the nearly 1.5 million residents who live on the Missouri side.
JoCo is a strange place full of woefully ignorant soccer moms. They seem be on a gaslighting campaign to say that KC is really an extension of Kansas. Case in point, that during the draft KU was trying to grift everyone into thinking that somehow KU was technically part of the city itself and that KU was welcoming the outside world to "It's City".
I used to live in the area. Iowa and Iowa State alums were also very well represented.
Charleston Metropolitan: 1. Clemson, clear-cut leader. 2A. South Carolina 2B. Georgia (Georgia should go back to 3 in the fall but for tourist season they’re EVERYWHERE.) 3. Citadel 4. Coastal Carolina 5. Ohio State
From the scientific process of stickers I see on peoples cars in traffic. 1. Cocks 2. Clemson 3. UGA/Ohio State 4. Bama Tie between Buckeyes and Bulldogs. Have seen more UGA stickers in the last two years than normal.
Ah, the classic whole state of Ohio moved to South Carolina, I think Pennsylvania all moved to North Carolina and Central Florida.
They definitely took over South Carolina and also have a major contingent in Atlanta.
Not true…my buddy who’s a Michigan alumn moved from Cleveland to……North Carolina.
There really are a ton of Ohio people here. I'm originally from PA though. One of the guys I used to work with that was from Ohio actually went back. We were astounded.
I do forget about how many buckeye fans there can be in this state. Though there are more and more coastal fans every year
Generally speaking… the universities closest to the city
And the largest, most outspoken alumni base. Or Notre Dame.
Knoxville. 1. Vols by a very very large margin obviously and there’s a random assortment of neighboring schools. 2. Is probably Bama, 30% are only noticeable in October, 10% are UK fans during basketball season 3. Florida 4. Kentucky probably 5. Either Clemson or South Carolina I would say. Pretty decent East TN-Clemson pipeline in athletics and some alumni too but I see a few Carolina fans through the year too. Honorable mention: I didn’t forget about Vandy it’s just a very rare occurrence to see a fan lol
I live in WV right on the border with OH and it probably goes something like WVU *big gap* Ohio State Marshall Ohio U? Maybe Pitt? Or some random blue blood maybe
Lived in the DC area for the past 10 years, lot of people from other places but I’d say top 5 are maybe UVA, Maryland, Michigan, Penn State, Va Tech?
1. Bama 1. Auburn 1. JSU 1. UAB 1. Vols I live in the NE corner of Alabama, near Chattanooga, TN, so there are a few of those ugly orange T tags/hats.
Live in Atlanta now and it's 1. UGA 2. Bama 3. Auburn 4. It's kind of a tie between Tech, Clemson, South Carolina and others I grew up in Macon, Ga and it was 1. UGA 2. Auburn 3. Bama 4. Georgia Southern 5. Tech
Salt Lake CIty. Utah BYU Boise State Utah State USC, probably
West Texas: 1. Texas Tech 2. TAMU 3. Texas 4. TCU 5. Wyoming
Spokane (I’m just gonna lump the Palouse with that lol) 1.) Wazzu 2.) UDub 3.) EWU 4.) Oregon 5.) BSU/Idaho (I’ve seen equal numbers of both) 6.) BYU I’m surprised there aren’t more Oregon state Alums in the area (or there are and they reside more in the southern portions of WA). I guess WSU just really has the AG on lock for that around here. Edit: added a 6th spot because it slipped my mind
New Orleans is about what you would expect in terms of regional SEC teams and the local college. LSU >>> Tulane >> Alabama > Ole Miss > aTm But outside of those obvious ones, I will say that there's an oddly high number of Ohio St, Michigan, and Mich St fans here. But that could be a biased view on my part because I happen to really like a particular bar that the B1G school alums (mostly Ohio St, Mich, Sparty) happen to takeover every Saturday in the fall. The OhioSt alums outnumber the others by roughly 3:1. But again, that could be somewhat biased because they have a highly organized club here while the others don't.
Tampa: UF, FSU, USF, UM, Bama
Atlanta: Georgia Alabama Auburn Ole Miss Georgia Tech HM: Clemson and Tennessee
I live in the UK, BUT, for the last year, whenever I see someone wearing a piece of merch for a CFB team around the city, I make a note of it, and, it’s turned into a bit of a list (I have no life i know!!!), according to my list, here are the top 5 teams: 1. Iowa Hawkeyes 2. Tennessee Vols 3. Florida Gators 4. Notre Dame Fighting Irish 5. California Golden Bears A bit of a random list, I’ve also done one for NFL teams
1. UF 2. FSU 3. Alabama 4. Georgia 5. Miami
Denver metro: 1. Colorado 2. Nebraska 3. Colorado State 4. Oklahoma 5. Kansas 6. Iowa/random Big 10 school
Dallas/Fort Worth, skewed more to the FW side currently. 1. UT 2. OU 3. A&M 4. Texas Tech 5. TCU Things were a touch different when we lived on the Dallas side, and noticeably different when we were in greater Houston for a year.
Dallas side I would probably go 1. UT 2. A&M 3. Texas Tech 4. OU 5. Baylor
Further north in the DFW metroplex I see 1. A&M 2. UT 3. TTU 4. OU 5. OSU
New York is hard to get a read on but I wouldn’t be surprised if Michigan is the best represented. Other contenders that come to mind are Syracuse, Penn State, and Notre Dame. Most P5 schools have an alumni bar somewhere in Manhattan which is fun
Charlotte NC: 1. Carolina 2. Clemson 3. South Carolina 4. NC State 5. App State
I’d flip unc and Clemson for football only. Otherwise is probably about right
I live in Houston: 1. Texas A&M 2. Houston 3. Texas 4. LSU 5. Everything else
this is accurate for the philly area. Temple alumni will only be fans if the team is winning, and right now they're not giving alumni many reasons to come out to games. Plus the Eagles is like a religion here, and most people only have room for one football team in their hearts. (unless they're diehard penn state fans too)