Texas Tech Third Largest Fan Base in Texas

You could spend literally hours looking at this interactive map from the New York Times that breaks down America’s college football rooting interests by county using Facebook data.

There have been countless attempts to visualize fan bases on a US map, but this is far and way the most extensive. Here’s how it was created.

From the NYT article.

"Like the other sets of maps, these were created using estimates 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."

Texas is, understandably, dominated by UT. However, here are a couple of interesting observations from the interactive map of the Lone Star State.

Texas Tech lays claim to over 60 zip codes in west Texas and eastern New Mexico, as well as splitting the majority of the state three ways between Texas and Texas A&M.

In and around Lubbock itself, over 60 percent of Facebook users like Texas Tech. Nowhere else in Texas outside of Austin and College Station can a school boast higher ratios.

Even in Waco, home of the defending Big 12 champion Baylor Bears, “Sic Em” can’t claim 50 percent of the loyalty.