Only two college athletics programs in the country draw a larger percentage of their support from non-alumni than the University of Georgia.
That's according to an SB Nation study of Facebook "likes" for the official athletics pages of colleges and universities. SB Nation had Facebook determine what percentage of a school's likes came from people who also list themselves as having attended that school.
For Georgia, only seven percent of people who liked the Bulldogs athletics Facebook page also say they went to school there. That’s tied with Oregon for third-fewest, behind Notre Dame (four percent) and North Carolina (five).
The methodology has some issues, as SB Nation’s Kevin Trahan acknowledges: “There are obvious imperfections to this methodology, including privacy settings, people who don't fill out their entire profiles, and some athletic departments simply being better at social media than others.”
Still, the results don’t offer many surprises. The top 10 includes national brand Notre Dame, eight flagship state schools (with four from the SEC) and, curiously, Northwestern.
I've lived in Georgia for five-plus years now and it seems to me the Bulldogs get a lot of support from non-alumni. I'm from Kentucky and can tell you the overwhelming majority of Wildcats fans never went to school at UK. I lived in Florida for seven-plus years and the Gators’ inclusion in the top 10 doesn’t surprise me, either. I lived in Wisconsin for five years and it was obvious the Badgers were backed by lots of non-alumni.
People who root for a school they didn’t attend are derisively called “sidewalk alumni” but criticizing such fans seems snobbish. Of course large state schools get support from non-alumni, especially when their programs are successful. Non-alumni support those teams because of state pride, identity, family ties and tradition—factors that are especially strong in the South, where lots of schools have little fan/alumni Facebook overlap.
Georgia Tech is at 20 percent fans/alumni Facebook overlap. That's also unsurprising because the state is dominated by Georgia supporters and the city is further split by fans of other SEC schools. I will say the Jackets are less successful at drawing wider support from non-alumni than other schools in similar circumstances.
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