Best NFL fans? Study: Cowboys, Patriots tops; Dolphins, Browns worst
Who are the best fans in the NFL? And the worst?
It’s a debate that likely never will be settled for a variety of reasons, the primary of which is that the people doing the debating are highly biased in their belief that their fan base has an ardor beyond any other. And of course, no one would ever admit to be the worst fan base of any team.
But some folks over at Emory University have tried to remove the bias from the equation and make a determination — based on tangible, indisputable data — to rank the fan bases of all 32 teams.
“‘Best’ is a funny word that can mean a lot of things but what we are really trying to get at is [their italics] what team has the most avid, engaged, passionate and supportive fans,” Mike Lewis and Manish Tripathi write in their 2015 study. “The twist is that we are doing this using hard data, and that we are doing it in a very controlled and statistically careful fashion.”
This is the third year in a row they’ve tried to make a determination, as fan bases wax and wane with their support, some cresting and bottoming in relation to winning stretches and losing spells. But what Lewis and Tripathi have found is that some fan collectives are immune to cold snaps, which allows them to remain at or near the top of the “best fan” determination.
That fits the description of the Emory study’s best fans for 2015 — those of the Dallas Cowboys, who are the best for three years running.
“The Cowboys have a storied history, a market that loves all forms of football, and a world-class stadium,” they wrote.
Next are the New England Patriots, though we don’t have a true barometer of how the deflate-gate incident or the ensuing Super Bowl title might have affected things. (The study was completed at the end of last season; deflate-gate might have been born following last season’s AFC championship game, but it didn’t go nuclear until ESPN’s false report about 11 of the Patriots’ 12 footballs being more than two PSI below the allowed floor.)
Both New York teams finished in the top five — the Giants at three, and the Jets at five. The Baltimore Ravens, impressively for a team that has been rooted in its city for less than 20 years, finished fourth in the study.
Fervent fan bases such as those of the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers finished with surprising rankings of seventh and 14th, respectively.
But, the good folks in those fine football towns want to know, why?
The duo has based its determination on what they call “actual fan behavior.” To wit, they weigh market outcomes (such as attendance, prices and revenues), support through tough stretches and other statistical information — 15 years’ worth, in fact — such as team performance, ticket prices, market populations, median incomes, won-loss records and multiple other factors. For a more complete description, they break down the factors here.
Certainly there will be universal acceptance on this topic. No disagreement whatsoever.
And those numbers not only tell the Emory folks that fans of the Cowboys are Patriots are incredibly strong but that those of the Miami Dolphins and Cleveland Browns are at the other end of the NFL spectrum.
“Cleveland may have never recovered from the loss of the Ravens, and the recreation of the Browns,” they write.
Sorry, Browns fans: A Cleveland Super Bowl win might change things dramatically in future studies, but for now Browns find themselves on the wrong end of things yet again.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
