Georgia Tech is 5-0, ranked in both polls and generating a bit of excitement. Maybe the momentum will be enough to make the Yellow Jackets the third-most popular college football team in Atlanta.
The Upshot, the statistical analysis section of the New York Times website, measured the support for college football teams across the country and concluded the Jackets are no better than No. 3 in Atlanta (hover your cursor over the counties to get the breakdown). According to its methodology (detailed below), Georgia, Alabama and Auburn are the three most popular teams in the four most populous counties in Metro Atlanta: Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett.
The map only lists the three most popular teams in each county, with results down the zip code, so it’s possible Tech isn’t even No. 4 in Atlanta. That seems hard to believe even considering the fractured college football fandom in Atlanta, with UGA as the dominant force but loyalties split among many other teams.
The Upshot’s methodology will come into question. It always does when it comes to sports tribalism. Here is how it determined the most popular teams in each region:
"(E)stimates of team support based on each team's share of Facebook "likes" in a ZIP code. We then applied an algorithm to deal with statistical noise and fill in gaps where data was missing. Facebook "likes" are an imperfect measure, but as we've noted before, Facebook likes show broadly similar patterns to polls."
This method misses people who don't use Facebook (older people, those with no Internet access, etc.) and those who do use Facebook but don't "like" their favorite team. Hard to say if including those populations would change the results much. The Upshot's answer: "We realize that clicking the “like” button on Facebook is not the same as following your team in real life, and that Facebook users are not always representative of the public. Yet the Facebook data covers millions of people — and broadly matches other data trying to answer the same question."
In any event, the Jackets are never going to enjoy broad support across the state or region but you'd think they could at least hold down their own city. Some other teams in similar circumstances are able to maintain a local foothold against the forces of the popular state school: Vanderbilt in Nashville, Memphis in Memphis, TCU in Dallas-Ft.Worth and Louisville (my alma mater) in Louisville.
This isn’t to blame Jackets fans for their (alleged) lack of support. On the contrary, I’ve always believed sports teams are one of several entertainment options. Colleges long ago turned their sports programs into money-making enterprises with higher and higher costs for fans. They can't depend on the loyalty of alumni to guarantee the revenue keeps flowing. It’s up to the teams to produce a product that people want to spend their time and money to consume.
The Jackets appear to be on their way to doing that now. Keep it up and the bandwagon could welcome some more members. And then maybe the next time the Upshot looks at college football fandom, Tech will be more popular than SEC schools from other states.
