College Football’s Popularity Continues to Rise

Published: 9^th Mar 12 2:37 pm

by Jay Beck
Jay Beck

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College Football’s Popularity Continues to Rise

Nelson Chenault-US PRESSWIRE

It’s not exactly breaking news to say football is a popular sport in the United States. People like it, a lot.

There’s also little question the NFL stands above the rest when it comes to sports in America, but college football’s popularity continues to be on a big upswing. The rise in popularity is also the main driver for the massive amounts of money TV networks continue to dish out in order to televise the sport

College football once again set an attendance record in 2011 with 49,699,4119 attending a game (all NCAA divisions combined). That’s a 32 percent increase going back to 1998. There were also another 213 million that watched a game from the confines of their living room during the regular season.

These figures were highlighted by the National Football Foundation in a release on their website on Thursday.

Within the NFF’s release, they highlighted a recent Harris poll which shows that college football is tied with Major League Baseball among the favorite sports in America with 13 percent of fans counting it as their favorite. The NFL leads the way with 36 percent of fans indicating it’s their top choice.

Five teams averaged more than 100,000 fans per game in 2011 (Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Penn State, and Texas). Thirteen schools in total played before more than 1 million fans in 2011 (road games included).

One of the more interesting aspects from the release was the breakdown of who makes up the college fan base. They define a “fan” as someone who has a very, somewhat, or a little bit of interest in the sport which seems fairly logical. Of those fans, 103 million claim to be fans of college football. A further breakdown of those 103 million people.

61% are male
39 percent are female
12% are 18-24 years old
18% are 25-34 years old
19% are 35-44 years old
20% are 45-54 years old
16% are 55-64 years old
16% are 65 or older.
61% have household income of $50,000 or more
42% have household income of $75,000 or more
25% have household income of $100,000 or more
32% are college graduates
61 % are married

I’m not sure exactly what all that means, but it seems to indicate that college football fans are evenly distributed between all the age groups and a good portion are married and bring in over $50,000 a year.

As for those folks clamoring against the current bowl system, the newest bowl attendance figures and ratings won’t do much to help their argument. The 35 bowl games drew an average attendance of 50,435 per contest, down just slightly from last season. There were also 127 million viewers that tuned in on TV to watch the 35 bowl games. The BCS National Championship drew over 24 million viewers making it the second highest watched program in the history of cable television.

Of course, you can still make the argument there are too many bowl games. There’s little doubt these figures become skewed by the biggest and best bowl games. (I mean, would anyone have noticed if the Beef O’Brady’s Bowl between Florida International and Marshall had never been played?). But that’s not what this about – just the facts here and I’ll save the opinions for another time.

Whatever your viewpoint may be on the bowls and a potential play-off coming in the sport, there’s little question that more and more people are paying attention to what happens on the field. The attendance numbers show it. The rating numbers show it, not to mention a few people’s pocket books. You can see all the facts and figures from the season and every bowl game on the National Football Foundation’s website.