Which college football programs have the most followers on social media?
Below, I’ve added up the number of people who “like” a team’s official page on Facebook or “follow” a team’s official page on Twitter or Instagram.
Obviously, this isn’t a perfect metric for measuring the size of a fan base.
It counts some people multiple times if they follow on more than one platform, and doesn’t count people who don’t use social media. It also counts people who like or follow a page even if they aren’t a fan of that team.
But overall, the variance will be about the same for each school, so everyone is on equal footing.
- Alabama — 3,423,170
- LSU — 2,975,067
- Michigan — 2,788,685
- Ohio State — 2,181,396
- Georgia — 2,085,198
- Clemson — 2,059,186
- Oklahoma — 1,671,275
- Notre Dame — 1,618,263
- Tennessee — 1,596,270
- Oregon — 1,542,895
- Penn State — 1,454,474
- Florida State — 1,361,224
- Texas — 1,352,358
- Florida — 1,338,528
- Wisconsin — 1,015,458
- Auburn — 996,970
- Miami — 890,744
- Arkansas — 751,979
- West Virginia — 725,628
- Nebraska — 684,077
- Texas A&M — 664,282
- Michigan State — 661,771
- South Carolina — 660,755
- Mississippi State — 597,243
- Mississippi — 551,622
- Washington — 519,219
- Iowa — 477,093
- Kentucky — 473,065
- Louisville — 428,920
- Oklahoma State — 426,221
- TCU — 424,351
- Virginia Tech — 421,696
- UCF — 380,197
- Utah — 371,843
- Arizona State — 360,941
- Missouri — 354,680
- UCLA — 348,041
- Southern Cal — 215,184
- BYU — 342,652
- Minnesota — 333,236
- North Carolina — 310,005
- Baylor — 309,592
- NC State — 295,232
- Pittsburgh — 285,453
- Stanford — 283,827
- Boise State — 278,710
- Texas Tech — 276,446
- Iowa State — 272,828
- Arizona — 264,025
- Army — 262,483
- Rutgers — 245,755
- Houston — 245,109
- Illinois — 243,419
- Georgia Tech — 239,622
- Maryland — 235,133
- Oregon State — 233,447
- Purdue — 221,871
- Kansas State — 214,338
- Memphis — 213,036
- Colorado — 212,537
- Indiana — 212,006
- Kansas — 206,217
- Syracuse — 204,646
- USF — 194,382
- California — 190,106
- East Carolina — 188,533
- Vanderbilt — 185,317
- Washington State — 178,139
- Navy — 169,029
- Cincinnati — 161,214
- Duke — 154,433
- Virginia — 153,663
- Temple — 122,474
- Northwestern — 111,852
- Boston College — 111,069
- Fresno State — 109,888
- Colorado State — 109,888
- SMU — 97,857
- Wake Forest — 92,217
- Air Force — 84,005
- Tulane — 80,756
- San Diego State — 75,320
- UNLV — 74,977
- Tulsa — 52,782
Note: Virginia Tech, Southern Cal, Pitt, Army, Kansas State, Memphis, California, Vanderbilt and Northwestern don’t have official Facebook pages for their football teams. For those schools, the Facebook following was calculated by averaging the number of likes on the school’s main athletic department Facebook page with the projected number of Facebook likes based on that school’s Twitter and Instagram follower count.
