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I attach this link not because its 100% accurate but only because it reflects in generalized terms what individual schools can carry as far as attention in the national public interest.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the ... ncaab.html

These maps show the amounts of Likes a certain team received in each county in the nation. While a technically useless statistic it gives you a rough idea of what schools interest what areas. These maps were divided by bracket.

Obviously the map is also far from perfect and likely has a few errors (seriously why code Louisville and Cincy with the same color) and well we can argue its merits forever but I think its interesting and shows you a general idea of what schools can claim what area as their territory. but it shows that the big schools can usually dominate a local area in interest, but only a few have national wide appeal...

OF the C7 + only Marquette managed to take a large region.... mostly the state of Wisconsin, although bizarelly a portion of the panhandle of Idaho and the interior of Maine...

bubble team Villinova did surprisingly well in claiming eastern Penn and New Jersey.

St. Louis managed to to hold the St. Louis market in the same bracket as Missouri and National Monolith Duke.

Number 2 seeded Georgetown failed to claim any region outside of the interior of Maine.... which oddly also chose Liberty in the midwest...

The real winners here are the national monoliths that are Duke, North Carolina, and Indiana. They were the only schools other then potentially Kansas that were able to garner dominate interest outside of their home regions. I'd argue that Kentucky would have done the same if they would have made the tourney.

After that schools were left scrapping for home regions- some did very well, others less so...

I do warn those who look at this as a reason to get Gonzaga, Gonzaga dominated the West in a West bracket that has no other Western teams other than Boise State (Boisie controlled Boise) The west also does not have a dominate national power in it in the likes of Duke and company.... it is the most regionalized map and has the highest number of non-voting counties then any other bracket.

I would also like to take this time to thank the Butler fans who liked Slu. Oddly St Louis took Indianapolis...

SLU has no fans outside of their own district by the look of it. Odd.

BillEsq wrote:bubble team Villinova did surprisingly well in claiming eastern Penn and New Jersey.

Nova is also doing very well in a good portion of Alaska... Thank god for that...

I'm surprised we didn't get more of the Boston area; I know a LOT of classmates who were either from New England, or moved there after graduation (I almost moved up there for a job 3 years ago).

My senior year was the Eagles Patriots Superbowl; Eagles had the advantage on campus, but it wasn't a landslide for sure.

admin wrote:SLU has no fans outside of their own district by the look of it. Odd.

lol the odd thing is that actually we took indy as well ending the northern advance of Louisville... the impressive thing is that we held St. Louis against Missouri...

remember this isn't were your only fans are... just whose fans clicked the most likes in each county in a certain amount of time.... (so as I pointed out in the preamble... far from the most accurate study... interesting... with some obvious relations .. but definitely not without its flaws.)

In theory Norwestern State could have the largest number of overall likes, but due to being second in every county in every state it would have failed to carry a single county. I mean you can shoot holes at this "study" at will, and god knows i'm not claiming its the best... but it is at least interesting.

DeltaV wrote:I'm surprised we didn't get more of the Boston area; I know a LOT of classmates who were either from New England, or moved there after graduation (I almost moved up there for a job 3 years ago).

My senior year was the Eagles Patriots Superbowl; Eagles had the advantage on campus, but it wasn't a landslide for sure.

You probably did get alot... The question is did they all click like on facebook in time for them to be counted. I tell you what i am impressed at the large territory nova pulled especially against the behemoth that is North Carolina... You also took a good part of Kentucky and that is fighting for votes with Western Ky as well.

It's interesting, but not sure it shows much. First, the age skew is low - not the typical mega TV package, season ticket holding, donor crowd. Second, it really doesn't account for "passing" likes. I like several schools around the area just to post & pass the information to my students. You will never see Butler outdraw Indiana in Indianapolis. Period.

butlerguy03 wrote:It's interesting, but not sure it shows much. First, the age skew is low - not the typical mega TV package, season ticket holding, donor crowd. Second, it really doesn't account for "passing" likes. I like several schools around the area just to post & pass the information to my students. You will never see Butler outdraw Indiana in Indianapolis. Period.

This is very true as i said in my opening post... you could argue a lot of different variables with these numbers and they definitely do not reflect who could or could not win the tournament... I also think they show no relation to any donors or potential donorship - I don't think i said anything that would insinuate that a facebook like would relate to donors and if there is any confusion I will make it clear- i do not think that these maps show anything about the monetary support of a schools athletic program- the actual number of fans- any fan base not using facebook (me) - or the quality of program

I do think that this map does show a cross section of some fragment of the population. The fact that people did not know that their likes were being tracked actually adds some credence. I think its interesting enough to note that only a few programs had wide national wide support and the majority of other programs had some set pockets. Obviously there is some correlation.

I did only intend to post this as a curiosity... I don't think anyone is shocked that people in Montana like Montana and so on... However, the map has some oddities as the fact that Villinova apparently did well in parts of Alaska- and obviously the regions were divided by brackets... this in theory hurts butler as it was probably swallowed by Indiana- Where as Slu in its bracket did not face a strong local challenge in the Indianapolis Market and maybe enough Butler fans voted for us... I don't think anyone is going to argue that Slu is going to carry the Indianapolis Market over Butler, if anything it shows that people in indy are well aware of Butler that they might even like some of their opponents rather than going with nearby favorite Louisville who took all of south Indiana or instate team Valpo who took a chunk of Northern Indiana. Really you can do this team by team.... its interesting and i think there are factors in anything...

But it does show who the casual fan "the bandwagon" fans like to an extent. ALA DUKE - I will say that you can tell the media attention Butler has gotten has also increased the nations awareness of them, multiple counties without clear allegiances to teams in the East region expressed an interest in Butler (im assuming Bucknell took central PA)

Once again i don't think this map is perfect and yes you can argue all the variables - I don't deny that, However, it does relate to some extent to national awareness of programs it clearly shows the local allegiances to most schools and identifies who the national "interest" powers are.

Unless the map is resized to account for population it's value is limited. A school could own all of a Midwestern region and have fewer fans than a school sharing an urban region with another school.

that is interesting for sure