The definitive NFL fan base map (LOLJets)

With the Super Bowl coming up this weekend, there's no shortage of football-related stories bouncing around. Most of them are utter nonsense, but thanks to Deadspin and the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective, we've actually got one pretty fun study to dive into. Yes, this is more sports nerdness, so jump on board.

Using data culled from Facebook, those good folks were able to put together (and then study) a map showing which NFL teams were the most popular (or most "liked") in each county throughout the nation. That enabled us to see, once and for all, what each team's "fan base" really looked like, geographically speaking. Courtesy of Deadspin, here is that map:

While there aren't too many big surprises there (although Alaska is downright bizarre, including a strange patch of Bills fans in the middle of the state), one thing did jump out at me pretty immediately—where the hell are the Jets fans? Oh, there they are... no, not that big green blob that includes southern New Jersey and Delaware—that's Eagles territory. No, it's that little sliver right on the western end of Long Island, comprising basically one county.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the Jets don't have any fans—it just means there isn't any one area in which they're the dominant team, since they're overwhelmed by Giants fans throughout the New York metropolitan area. In fact, the Jets still check in with the 14th-largest fan base according to the study, despite having no real sphere of dominance. Thanks to the HCSAC people, we have the full breakdown for you as well:

Looking closer at this list, it's pretty clear that winning matters, which shouldn't surprise us. The top 3 teams in terms of fan base also happen to be the top 3 teams in terms of historical Super Bowl appearances—the Cowboys and Steelers have 8, the Patriots have 7. And of the top 12 teams on that list, 9 of them have won multiple Super Bowl titles (only the Saints, Bears, and Eagles have not).

Finally, as the HCSAC folks point out, each team that has won a Super Bowl in the last 9 years currently has more than 1.5 million fans, placing them in the top quarter of the league—since both the 49ers and Ravens currently sit on the outside of that top quartile, it'll be interesting to see what kind of fan base jump they may get by winning this weekend.

All in all, the fan base map jives pretty well with our intuitions—the "New England" Patriots moniker is apt, since all of New England minus a small corner of Connecticut leans toward the Pats (they're also big in Canada, and in the U.K.); the Cowboys dominate a huge portion of the country; and Los Angeles, lacking a team, still seems largely to pull for the Raiders, perhaps pining for the olden days. And despite a brief period of dominance at the turn of the century, the Rams can't seem to secure a fan base, nor can the ever-stumbling Jacksonville Jaguars.

Also, the league's fan base continues to skew toward the northern and eastern parts of the country—I ran the numbers to figure out the total numbers of fans by division, and came up with the following:

The East and North divisions make up the top four, combining for more than 65% of the total Facebook fans. Granted, that's aided in large part by the geographical oddity of the Cowboys being in the "East" division, but even if you were to swap the Cowboys with, say, the Rams, you'd still be looking at a 56.2% edge in favor of the North and East versus the South and West. I think it's interesting that the breakdown is in many ways the opposite of what you might expect to see in college football, where the SEC dominates everything—it's possible, if not likely, that the NCAA is pulling share away from the NFL (and the poor Jaguars) in that region.

As one final note, there are some teams who are simply dominant (in terms of fan support) within their divisions—the Steelers boast 64.8% of the total AFC North fans, followed by the Saints with 60.7% of the NFC South, the Colts with 56.8% of the AFC South, and the Patriots with 52.9% of the AFC East. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the Bills (6.9% of AFC East), Jaguars (9.0% of AFC South), Bengals (9.4% of AFC North), and Redskins (10% of NFC East).

But getting back to this weekend, in case you were wondering what the "fan base" breakdown looks like if you consider only the Super Bowl participants, we've got that for you, too. Once again from Deadspin:

Clearly, the nation is leaning heavily toward the 49ers, which is unsurprising given that they've got almost 30% more total Facebook fans than do the Ravens. I apparently should have split allegiances, given that my hometown of Boston is red and my current home state of Virginia is painted purple. Good prediction, in fact—I literally do not care who wins this weekend. Good talk. Enjoy the game.

[Deadspin]
[Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective]

My (completely non-standard) Super Bowl prediction

With all eyes on Indianapolis for Super Bowl XLVI--and my Patriots involved in the big game again--I feel the need to join the parade and weigh in with my prediction for how things will go.

Before I begin, I have to say that I've been overwhelmed by the massive amount of Giants love so far from the "experts". Yes, they've played well lately (otherwise they wouldn't be here), and yes, they present matchup problems for the Patriots in multiple regards--hence the win in the regular season (and no, Super Bowl XLII doesn't mean a thing from a matchup/prediction standpoint).

But they don't build those big buildings in Vegas by accident, and the oddsmakers still give the Pats the edge, even given the murky health of tight end Rob Gronkowski. That might have something to do with the fact that the Patriots were 13-3 in the regular season, while the Giants were 9-7 and actually got outscored by their opponents--but I digress. The point is, these teams are pretty dead even as far as matchups go, and I'm surprised to see any consensus at all among the assorted media.

Now, as you'll know if you've read me often, I have significant philosophical problems with the typical reward system surrounding punditry. Experts are rewarded for making big, bold statements at every turn, knowing that they will get tons of attention for their correct picks, but face little accountability when they are wrong. Predictions (and predictors), therefore, tend to be overly bold, overly confident, and needlessly specific and certain.

All of these dynamics are at play with the standard practice of picking not just the winner of the Super Bowl, but the exact score. I won't be doing that here. Instead, I'm going to be the stat-geekiest stat geek around, giving you a range of possible outcomes, with accompanying probabilities. Hooray! Math fun for everyone! And because I'm not actually making a real pick, I can't possibly be wrong! Alright, fine, I'll make a standard pick at the end, just for kicks, because I know you want it. But I'm not happy about it.

Now... let's get to it. I'm presenting you with three potential game scenarios: The Shootout, The Slugfest, and The Blowout. For each scenario, I'll give you both the probability of that type of game happening, and the conditional probability of each team winning if that scenario develops. Make sense? Alright, cool.

Game Scenario #1: The Shootout (Probability: 55%)  

Recent Super Bowl examples: Super Bowl XLV, Super Bowl XXXVIII, Super Bowl XXXII

Neither of these teams has a particularly great defense. The Giants and Patriots allowed the 27th-most and 31st-most yards of any team in the league this year, respectively, and neither was in the top half of the league in terms of points allowed (the Giants were actually statistically worse than the Patriots, allowing 25 points per game vs. New England's 21.4). Furthermore, both offenses were quite explosive, with Tom Brady and Eli Manning both finishing in the top 5 in the NFL in passing yards.

Therefore, "The Shootout" is far and away the most likely game scenario to develop in Super Bowl XLVI. Picture both teams scoring over 24 points, with the winner posting at least 30. Who has the edge in this scenario? The statistics say the Patriots, despite their shaky secondary. That's mostly because of Brady, who has a higher completion percentage, more touchdown passes, and fewer interceptions this year (and for his career) than Manning.

In games this year where both teams scored at least 24 points, the Patriots were 4-1, while the Giants were just 3-3. Simply put, this year's Patriots are designed to win this type of game. Their edge isn't overwhelming here, but it's significant. In a shootout, the better quarterback usually wins, and Eli is still no Tom Brady.

Edge: Patriots (60% to 40%)

Game Scenario #2: The Slugfest (Probability: 30%)

Recent Super Bowl examples: Super Bowl XLII, Super Bowl XL, Super Bowl XXXVI

This scenario is essentially the opposite of The Shootout, and it would be a repeat of the last time these two teams met in the Super Bowl--a 17-14 Giants victory. Picture both teams scoring fewer than 20 points, and a few big plays (think: helmet catch) making the difference.

Despite the limitations of both defenses, this scenario isn't terribly unlikely. Both defenses have their strengths--generally speaking, it's the Giants' pass rush and the Patriots' ability to force turnovers--and those strengths have shown themselves at various times in the playoffs. Neither defense has allowed more than 20 points in a game so far this postseason (the Giants have allowed an average of 13 per game, the Patriots have allowed 15), and the defenses have combined for 17 sacks and 8 turnovers in the playoffs.

Ultimately, though, this kind of game has to favor the Giants. The Patriots are at their best when they're playing a wide-open game, and they certainly don't want to have to rely on their defense to make stops if they can avoid it. That worked against the Ravens, but barely. It's unlikely to happen again, and the Patriots will need to avoid the turnovers that plagued them in the AFC Championship.

Edge: Giants (70% to 30%)

Game Scenario #3: The Blowout (Probability: 15%) 

Recent Super Bowl examples: Super Bowl XXXVII, Super Bowl XXXV, Super Bowl XXIX

Ah, yes. The Super Bowl blowout. It's been so long since we've had one of these that we've almost forgotten that they were a mainstay of our childhood (assuming that we grew up in the '80s and '90s). Beginning with Super Bowl XV in 1981, 12 of the next 19 Super Bowls were decided by two touchdowns or more, and several of those were severely lopsided affairs (seven were 20+ point blowouts, of which four were 30+ point routs).

Those games have gladly become a thing of the past--seven of the last twelve Super Bowls have been decided by a touchdown or less, and there hasn't been a true "blowout" since the Buccaneers' Super Bowl XXXVII rout nine years ago. But there's still a chance of the blowout returning, even if it's the least likely of the three game scenarios.

But if the blowout does rear its ugly head again, chances favor the Patriots--by a wide margin. Since Tom Brady took over as Patriots quarterback in 2001, no team has won more games or lost fewer games by two touchdowns or more. The Patriots are 61-14 in those types of games (in the regular season; they're an additional 5-2 in the postseason), good for a staggering 81% winning percentage. No other team in the league comes close, and this disparity is a big part of the reason that the Patriots have been so dominant for the last decade--the Patriots rarely get run off the field, so they've pretty much always got a chance.

The Giants, for their part, are an even 33-33 in blowout games over the same span (plus 2-1 in the postseason), and they're only 10-10 over the last three seasons, during which the Patriots have gone a staggering 19-3. The only good news for the Giants is that their two postseason blowout wins have both come in the last month, over the Falcons and the Packers. But history indicates that a third such win is highly unlikely. If the Super Bowl rout returns, chances are it'll be Brady & Belichick who bring it back.

Edge: Patriots (80% to 20%)

So what do you get when you put it all together? Well, an awesome little stat geek matrix, that's what! 

For the record, then, the most likely outcome (of the 6 possible) is a Patriots win in a Shootout, with the Patriots also holding the overall edge. Interestingly, though, the 2nd and 3rd most likely scenarios are both Giants victories--in a Shootout and in a Slugfest, respectively. The take-home lesson is that if the Patriots can avoid a Slugfest--something they were unable to do in Super Bowl XLII--they've got a great chance at winning this game.

Okay, since you made me do it, here's my "standard" pick. My matrix, which is mathematically proven to never be wrong, tells me that a Patriots Shootout win is the most likely, so that's what I'm going with. I have 33% certainty that my pick is correct.

The Crimson Cavalier's needlessly precise, certain-to-be-wrong Super Bowl prediction

Patriots 34, Giants 24

With Gronkowski playing but limited, Brady is forced to use his secondary targets more frequently. He does so very effectively, as both Chad Ochocinco and Kevin Faulk haul in touchdown passes. Wes Welker and BenJarvus Green-Ellis contribute the other touchdowns for the Pats, as New England's offensive line does an admirable job of controlling the Giants' pass rush.

Meanwhile, with the Patriots employing bracket coverage on Victor Cruz for much of the game, Manning must also look to his secondary options for production. He is similarly effective, with Jake Ballard and Ahmad Bradshaw making big contributions in the passing game. A slick receiving touchdown from Bradshaw keeps the Giants close, and they have a chance to tie the game in the late stages. 

Trailing 31-24 with under four minutes to play and the ball in Patriots territory, Manning chooses a bad time to throw his first interception of the day--he tries to force a ball to Cruz in the slot, and Julian Edelman comes up with the crucial pick. A screen pass to Aaron Hernandez brings the ball into Giants territory, where a Stephen Gostkowski field goal gives the Patriots the clinching points.

There. Now that you know what won't happen, you can go ahead and enjoy the game. Do I get to be on ESPN now?

It's not easy to save the world

I wrote a post here recently about charity (specifically, on incentives vs. grants), and in the wake of the Super Bowl, I've come across another interesting item that falls in the same basic category. Once again, there is some question as to what might be the best (or at least, most efficient) way of donating to charitable causes.

Every year before the Super Bowl (and other large sporting events, I'd imagine), officially licensed t-shirt producers print up two batches of "Super Bowl Champions" shirts, one for each participant in the game. The winning team's shirts are sold and/or given to the winning players, while the losing team's unfortunate shirts are shipped to Africa by an intermediary. As a Patriots fan, it's a process I'm all too familiar with:

This donation seems like a nice and charitable use for what would otherwise be wasted textiles, but according to guest poster Dean Karlan at the Freakonomics Blog, it's not quite that simple.

The Super Bowl stirred up an old controversy in the international aid community.  What happens to all those preprinted “Pittsburgh Steelers 2011 Super Bowl Champion” t-shirts?  Apparently, each year the NFL gives them to the international relief and development organization World Vision, who then ships them to Africa.

Is this good or bad? And why should anyone care?

This is not the first time these questions have been asked. Less than a year ago, [web entrepreneur] Jason Sadler planned to send a million t-shirts to Africa, only to be bombarded by scathing criticism from the aid blogosphere...

Opponents argue that sending shirts destroys local textile economies by flooding the market with free goods and undercutting local t-shirt producers. World Vision responds by saying something to the tune of, “but we spread it out.” That is kind of like arguing that something bad is okay if you do it in small enough doses to lots of people (rather than a large dose to a few people). Of course, such arguments don’t hold water: bad is bad, even if marginally so.

I think World Vision might have a better defense. They could argue that critics of the annual t-shirt migration (or at least all the critics I’ve heard) are thinking about the wrong counterfactual. The choice is not between (a) doing nothing — which, critics infer, would leave Africans to produce and sell 100,000 new t-shirts — and (b) shipping 100,000 t-shirts to Africa. Rather, the choice is between (a) selling the t-shirts in the U.S. as rags (or novelty souvenirs for delusional Steelers fans) and then sending to Africa the proceeds plus the money that would have been spent on shipping, or (b) shipping 100,000 t-shirts to Africa.

In other words, the NFL surely isn’t going to pay local producers to make 100,000 t-shirts after the Super Bowl. That option is not on the table. So in the end, the t-shirt migration has one pro and two cons, and we have no real data to tell us what to do. The pro: some people in Africa get some t-shirts, and hopefully those people extract some value from the t-shirts (either by wearing them or by selling them). The first con: market prices for t-shirts may go lower in Africa, and this adversely affects some. The second con: there may simply be a better way, such as selling the t-shirts in the US and sending the profits, as in (a) above.

Because of a lack of reliable data, Karlan is unable to go much farther in his analysis, leaving us to grapple with an open-ended question. As in my previous case of incentives vs. grants, it's not completely clear whether our "charity" is in fact doing more good than harm.

In attempting to devise a proper charitable program, these are exactly the kinds of questions that must be answered, and yet they're the most difficult ones to decipher. It is indeed difficult to save the world, even if our hearts are in the right place. So, as Dean Karlan did before me, I'll ask you: what do you think? Is it better to try and do harm than never to have tried at all?

[Freakonomics Blog]

Feigned outrage is the worst kind of outrage

Yes, the Drudge Report is famously alarmist in nature, but when I read the headline "REPORT: Navy Spends $450K on Closed Roof Superbowl Flyover", it nevertheless piqued my interest. It definitely caught my eye on Sunday when the (butchered) pre-Super Bowl national anthem was followed by a fly-over, despite the fact that the roof to Cowboys Stadium was closed. The concept seemed a little silly to me, but then, there were a whole lot more people watching that game on TV than in the stadium, so more people saw the fly-over than missed it.

But the more I thought about Drudge's headline, the more upset I got. His attempt to spark outrage among anti-federalist conservatives is a hack move, and it fails the sniff test on a number of counts. First of all, $450k is a number that sounds large to most of us (and it is, for our personal budgets), but one that is in fact minuscule when we consider the massive size of our national budget (and deficit). Our cognitive dissonance in this regard is well explored in this video, which is an old classic:

Drudge is taking advantage of our psychological inclinations here, overblowing a story to make it seem indicative of a culture of wasteful government spending. (In fairness, he didn't write the article, The Daily Mail did, but his linking to it without any further explanation makes him nonetheless culpable).

The concept of government waste may have something to it, and it probably does. But we're not going to balance our budget simply by trimming some fat here and there, as is a common misconception--the deficit (and debt) is simply too large to be explained away by "government inefficiency". Furthermore, the more you chip away at this "REPORT", the less meat there is to it.

In my former life as a sports marketer, I helped to arrange and coordinate multiple fly-overs at sporting events. There is in fact a well-developed process for doing so, and it almost always involves rerouting a training flight for a local branch of the military--that is to say, no (or few) additional dollars are spent for sports arena flyovers. The planes are simply diverted from one patch of airspace to another, flying over Cowboys Stadium instead of flying over random non-descript land in eastern Texas. (Yes, these planes came from Virginia and not the Dallas area, which seems a bit strange, but the additional fuel costs to cover those 1,000 miles really don't move the needle much in terms of "wasteful spending".) As the Naval Air Force spokesman quoted in the Daily Mail article noted,

"These missions are included in the annual operating budget of all branches of the military and they are used as training... There was no additional money provided to us - Congress did not cut us a special cheque to do this flyover. This is considered a training mission whether they were to fly over the Super Bowl or not."

That last point, even more so than the cognitive dissonance point, is what makes this "news item" such a glaring example of bad journalism. The $450k is--for the most part--an accounting trick, a phantom "expense", newsworthy only on the merits of a technicality. If the headline had instead said "REPORT: Navy spends $450k on pilot training exercise", would anyone have cared? Of course not. But by twisting around the facts and perverting the accounting, Drudge and the Daily Mail have created a story where there was none. That sort of behavior is exactly what has dragged our political rhetoric so far down into the mud, and it simply needs to stop. Happy Friday.

[Daily Mail]

Quote of the Week

From what I've read, I think I can assume that we all watched the Super Bowl on Sunday night. Well, most of us, anyway. Of course, with the terrible weather in Dallas all week long leading up to the big game, it seems like it was a game best watched from many hundreds of miles away.

From the four hour taxi waits to the fan injuries from falling ice to the ticket debacle, it seems like Dallas was unprepared for this event in every regard. Gladly, Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl was here to sum it all up nicely for us.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

By the sounds of it, Qatar hosting the World Cup might work out better than Dallas hosting the Super Bowl.
             - Grant Wahl; Sports Illustrated columnist

Well said. I've made my feelings about the 2022 Qatar World Cup fairly clear, and let's hope things can't go any worse than they did this past week in Dallas. But who am I kidding? Of course they will.

[Twitter]

More on Super Bowl ads

I posted yesterday about my favorite Super Bowl ads from the past couple of decades, and with Fox set to rake in about $300 million in ad sale revenues this Sunday, it was an appropriate time for the folks over at Slate to discuss banned Super Bowl commercials, and whether they might be a better business decision for the companies in question than actually running an ad during the game itself (spoiler alert: yup).



This dynamic adds another interesting angle to the way that social media and the internet is challenging the traditional advertising world, and more fundamentally reshaping the way that consumers relate with the brands whose products they buy.

Large, expensive, mass-media advertisements that generate massive amounts of impressions and raise general brand awareness are not the slam-dunk they were once perceived to be. In the age of Google AdSense and AdWords, targeted advertisements with high conversion rates are gaining a significant amount of traction. Super Bowl ads are still a lucrative business for the networks involved, but the higher the price tag, the more companies will start to look for other ways to get their customers' attention.

[Slate]
(h/t Deadspin)

Quote of the Week

Apologies for the lack of posting today--was feeling under the weather all day. Speaking of weather, how you doin', Chicago?

But it was Media Day for the Super Bowl down in Dallas, which means no shortage of options for this week's Quote of the Week. I'm going to give it to Steelers defensive end Brett "The Diesel" Keisel, whose awesome playoff beard is stealing the show.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"There are not a lot of jobs in America that would let you come to work looking like this."
                                 -Steelers defensive end Brett Keisel