College Football's 25 Most Engaged Fan Bases

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By Sam Laird2013-07-23 01:28:55 UTC

It's July, the dullest month of the sports calendar, when days pass slower than Rich Eisen running a 40-yard dash, and we're forced to entertain ourselves with the fact that Kevin Love's dad looks just like Ron Burgundy.

But the sports summer doldrums do come with one silver lining: It's almost college football season. In just a few (okay, several) short (okay, regulation-length) weeks, we'll all be tailgating and screaming our heads-off for our favorite teams.

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Just which college-football programs have the best fans, however, is always a topic of fierce debate. Is it LSU's bunch of bayou-dwelling maniacs? USC's sweater-wearing SoCal set? The beleaguered-yet-proud loyalists over at Penn State?

Such questions are hard to quantify, but one tech company thinks it has fan bragging rights distilled down to a science. Online ticket broker TicketCity used an algorithm to rank the top fan bases in college football. Their secret sauce takes into account Twitter followings, Facebook likes and "talking about" metrics, as well as a variety of IRL factors including attendance, percentage of stadium capacity filled at home games and home ticket prices from the 2012 season.

Is this a definitive and precise measurement? Of course not. Is it an entertaining way to account for both digital and real-world fandom, while passing some time during the gruelingly uneventful off-season? You bet. Here, below, is TicketCity's top 25:

1. 
   

   University of Michigan

   
   


2. 
   

   Louisiana State University

   
   


3. 
   

   University of Alabama

   
   


4. 
   

   Ohio State University

   
   


5. 
   

   Texas A&M University

   
   


6. 
   

   University of Nebraska

   
   


7. 
   

   University of Oklahoma

   
   


8. 
   

   University of Texas

   
   


9. 
   

   University of Georgia

   
   


10. 
    

    University of Florida

    
    


11. 
    

    Penn State University

    
    


12. 
    

    University of South Carolina

    
    


13. 
    

    University of Iowa

    
    


14. 
    

    University of Southern California

    
    


15. 
    

    University of Oregon

    
    


16. 
    

    Michigan State University

    
    


17. 
    

    University of Tennessee

    
    


18. 
    

    University of Wisconsin

    
    


19. 
    

    Auburn University

    
    


20. 
    

    Clemson University

    
    


21. 
    

    West Virginia University

    
    


22. 
    

    Florida State University

    
    


23. 
    

    University of Missouri

    
    


24. 
    

    University of Arkansas

    
    


25. 
    

    Virginia Tech University

    
    

Not a whole lot of surprises here, as it essentially reads like a who's who of college football's big-time programs. Nonetheless, you may have some new bragging rights over your sports-crazed friends — assuming, of course, they're not Michigan fans.

How does your team stack up? Let us know in the comments.

Image: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Topics: college sports, Entertainment, Sports