This episode of the Fanalytics podcast, hosted by Mike Lewis, a professor at Emory University, delves into his annual analysis of NFL fandoms through analytical techniques. The discussion emphasizes the importance of understanding fan bases, which reflect cultural trends and passions shaping society. Key points include the NFL's role as a cultural unifier, the evaluation of fan base strength through metrics like ticket prices, attendance, and social media followings, and the relevance of market potential. Specific franchise analyses highlight the impact of foundational stories, legendary performances, and especially elite quarterbacks on fan loyalty and engagement. The episode covers teams ranked from 32 to 18, discussing their historical contexts and fandom outlooks, and concludes with insights on factors that create strong fan bases.
Evaluating NFL Fandom: A Deep Dive into the Bottom Half of the Rankings
In this episode of the Fanalytics podcast, Professor Mike Lewis from Emory University explores the intricate dynamics of NFL fandom. He discusses why assessing fan bases is crucial and outlines his analytical method. Using metrics like ticket prices, attendance, and social media following, Lewis ranks NFL teams from 32 to 17, highlighting the significant factors and historical narratives that influence each team's fan engagement. Key issues such as market size, income levels, historical success, and the presence of elite quarterbacks are examined to understand fandom outcomes. Teams like the Arizona Cardinals, LA Chargers, Washington Commanders, and more are discussed in detail, providing insights into why they rank as they do and what challenges they face in building stronger fanbases.
00:00 Welcome to the Fanalytics Podcast
00:35 The Importance of Evaluating NFL Fandom
03:45 Analyzing NFL Teams: Methodology
06:53 Fandom Outcomes and Market Potential
15:11 Ranking NFL Teams: The Bottom Tier
22:49 Tennessee Titans: A Legacy of Change
23:29 Indianapolis Colts: A Tale of Two Cities
25:22 Jacksonville Jaguars: Struggling for Identity
27:18 LA Rams: Glitz, Glamour, and Challenges
29:26 Detroit Lions: The Sleeping Giant
31:02 Quad Four Summary: Lessons in Fandom
32:22 Cincinnati Bengals: Rising from the Ashes
34:24 Miami Dolphins: Legacy and Challenges
36:25 Chicago Bears: A Legacy of Missed Opportunities
38:38 Minnesota Vikings: Consistently Close
40:01 New York Jets: The Eternal Underdogs
41:29 Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Building a Legacy
42:44 Atlanta Falcons: Rising in a Competitive Market
44:07 Buffalo Bills: Passionate and Resilient
46:37 Quad Three Summary: The Importance of Elite Quarterbacks
47:39 Conclusion and What's Next
Right everyone. Welcome to the Fanalytics podcast. My name is Mike Lewis. I'm a professor at Emory university in Atlanta, Georgia. All right. Today's episode is one of our annual features. We are going to take a look at at NFL fandom. So this is I guess this is something I've been doing for about a decade. So it's one of the things that really started this path towards Fanalytics of applying analytical techniques, to all things sports, both, you know, on field athletics, but also, and this is where I've ended up specializing the last couple of years. On the fandom side.
Okay. Now why, why is it important to evaluate fan bases? Right. And this sounds like a classic bar room conversation of now the bears fans are better than the Packers fans are. The Cowboys fans are better than the giants fans. Okay, so on some level it's it sounds sort of frivolous. But here's the thing and really limits, make two points. So number one. Studying the NFL is actually an important thing in and of itself. The NFL is the closest thing that we have to a cultural unifier. I think about 120 million people watch last year, Superbowl. Maybe a little bit inflated. Maybe a little bit inflated, right?
Taylor swift was there. We had sort of the external drama of Taylor swift and, and Kelsey. But this is the one thing where you can go into the office or you can go to school and you can go online. And people will know what you're talking about. You can find other NFL fans. You look at lists of the top, most viewed programs each year, and the NFL absolutely dominates the top 100. It's it's actually really striking when you take a look at it. The NFL is essentially the only organization.
The only thing that can regularly draw more than 10 million people. Other leagues. In the NBA. Major league baseball. You look at their, their championship series, the world series. And sometimes, you know, it's almost inevitably going to be less than about 15 million people. You look at major events like the Grammys. The academy awards.
And again, you're not going to approach the level of the NFL. So this is something that's worth understanding. You know, why is the NFL, the, the unifier, I mean, I can give you some, some speculation, right? It's the fact that the NFL is a spectacle. It's only on Sunday. They've got great. Tie-ins with gambling, everyone, your grandma plays fantasy football. They've got a round the year calendar in terms of events, the NFL draft free agency, the combined training camps.
So the NFL is probably the closest thing that connects all Americans. Hey, the other thing. Delving into and doing analytics on a cultural brand, like the NFL. Is also an important thing. People tend to, you know, not want to talk a lot about, a lot about culture when trying to understand society or politics or where the country is going. But culture is critically important, right?
And fandom is critically important. Fandom is about cultural passion. So fandom really dictates the society that we live in. What people care about. Is inevitably what the market is going to produce more of. If the, you know, If, if in general, we're only fans of the NFL, then we're going to have more NFL programming. You know, if we're fans of country music, we're going to get more country music.
We're fans of hip hop. We're going to get more hip hop. So being able to analyze cultural brands like the NFL. Ends up being an important thing. A truly important thing, a vital thing. If we want to understand how our society works.
Alright, so the first thing, before we, look, before we get to the list, I want to talk a little bit about the method. I want to give you guys some insights into how I go about analyzing Barner laureate, like the NFL teams, so first part. First thing to think about is, and one of the things I'm going to go back and forth on as I'm going to use the word brand, and I'm going to use the word fandom.
I think some particularly marketing professionals might object to that. But from my point of view. The brand is the thing that the fans have a relationship with, so it ends up really being two sides of the same coin. We can analyze fans, we can see what their behaviors are, how much they spend, what they watch, or we can analyze the brand.
How much awareness there is how much preference, how much love people express for it. The truth of the matter is, brands and fans, fan relationships, are both assets. That cultural, the teams have, or cultural brands have. They've got their brands and they've got their fans. The way, when you're taking a look at it from a analytics perspective, or even from a marketing management's perspective, one of the decisions you need to make is which side, which asset can you leverage?
Which asset can you work with? Okay. So look, in some ways it would be great if we had detailed information on what every NFL team was doing. We're not going to have that. What we're going to be able to look at is market level outcomes. And those really reflect on the power of the brand, right? So we're not going to be able to understand or analyze individual level fan behaviors, but we can get a sense of how fans respond to these different NFL brands, essentially the team names, at the market level.
Level. Okay. So there's always going to be a challenge in analyzing brands, right? Brands are intangible assets. So whenever you see people talk about what are the best brands, it immediately starts to get a little bit murky. What are you going to look at? You can, and people have talked about different things.
People even mention things like we'll look at how brands are sold in the financial market. And we'll assume the financial markets are efficient in their mark in there. And they're valuing brands correctly. That's a tough thing for most brands, right? Not a lot of brands are sold. Not a lot of NFL teams are sold.
So we end up relying mainly on marketing metrics. And so some of the big ones that people will look at, let's say price premiums. Can Coca Cola charge a higher price than, I don't even know if it's circled around, but RC Cola or the store brand, right? Market share. What is the market share of a top brand versus a lower tier brand?
Revenue share might be a thing that combines both price and Market share. So one of our starting points for analyzing brands is going to be see how to see how they perform in the marketplace. Okay. Now when we're talking about cultural brands, then I think what we really need to think about is we're talking about fandom.
Outcomes. The fandom outcomes that I'm using for this year's analysis are I'm using a bunch of them, but in terms of what I'm going to talk about, just to keep things relatively simple, I'm going to talk mainly about three different fandom outcomes. The first one is price. What are the ticket prices that NFL teams are able to charge?
How much pricing power do the various teams have? I'm going to use information from the team marketing report for this part of the analysis. Now, look, this is a great metric, right? Price is a great metric because it really gets to the heart of how much people are willing to spend to see their team.
Now price also has some drawbacks, right? Price is going to be a function of the market, it's going to be a function of the stadium size, it's going to be a function of what the prices were last year. Okay, the second metric is going to be attendance. Okay, now again, attendance is in that it gives us a signal of how willing Fans are to show up to see the team, right?
The time commitment. We're willing to make, willing to sit in traffic willing to spend an entire Sunday going out to see their team Okay, so it's a measure of effort. Ahem. Now, the third one is going to be social media following. The first two really are decent signals of fans in market. I like social media a lot.
A lot because social media following gives us a sense of how popular the various teams are across the entire nation. It's, in some ways it's tough to be it's tough to be able to afford to pay for NFL tickets, but it's easy to follow us follow a team on social media. So social media, again, maybe it's a little bit on the casual side, but it gives us a signal of the breadth of fandom and in particular fandom outside of the market.
Okay, so those are, at least for the discussion, the three fandom outcomes that I'm going to talk about. One thing that you've got to deal with when dealing with cultural brands, and in particular team brands, is the differences in the markets. Okay, this is the exact opposite of an even playing field.
There are about 20 million people in the New York market, right? There's about 13 million in the L. A. market. I think there are 328 or so a thousand people in Green Bay. Okay. So markets can vary in size from 20 million to 300, 000. There's also really significant differences in income levels.
And again, the NFL has become a big money sport. And so being in a market with a lot of wealth, like San Francisco is going to be far more lucrative, going to give you more positive signals Random outcomes like the prices people are willing to pay them being in a market like Cincinnati or Cleveland.
Okay. So there's really two sides of this equation in terms of what's going to generate revenue and outcomes for the teams. Both something about the team brand and how we use a and the team potential. Now, the one thing that I'm not going to control for this year, and I'll come back to this at the end of the podcast, is short term changes in terms of how often teams are winning at a given moment.
The method. Okay, so the input data is a bunch of stuff related to fandom outcomes, market signals of how interested fans are in their team, how much they're willing to spend, the time commitment, and there's also a bunch of variables related to market potential. Variables that reflect how attractive a given market is.
San Francisco and New York on one side, perhaps. Green Bay and Cincinnati Buffalo on another, on the other side. Okay, I take the information, really divide those into the two categories of outcomes and market and potential, and create indexes. And I'm not going to go into the statistics, but create an index related to fandom outcomes.
Okay, how much enthusiasm fans show in the marketplace again. So we're taking measures of economic outcomes rather than delving into the psychology, because this is what we can actually observe. Okay. So we create an index for fandom outcomes, scale it from zero to 100. And similarly. Create an index for market potential predominantly looking at at income and population, but adding in a bunch more demographic variables related to metropolitan areas.
Okay, the second stage of this. Is creating a statistical model that relates, essentially relates the market potential to the fandom outcomes. Okay. And again, the logic of this is if you're awarded the NFL franchise in New York, you expect to have better fandom outcomes, more fans, essentially, than if you are awarded the, pick a market that doesn't exist.
If you had a choice between New York. and Memphis, you're going to pick New York. Okay, so a statistical model that predicts fandom outcomes as a function of market potential. Okay, the third stage of this is then looking at how different teams compare. So you got to remember, The statistical model is based on data across the league, so essentially it's an economic model of how the league works.
So then the third stage compares actuals, how each team actually performed on the fandom metrics, versus what we would predict based on league wide norms or league wide averages as captured by our statistical model. The last stage is then putting it all together and essentially and basically ranking the teams based on how much they out or underperform their league peers.
Before we get to the countdown of teams from 32 to 1, the other thing I want to mention is that when I think about why some teams are ranked in the 30s and some teams are ranked in the top 5, what I'm going to tend to focus on in terms of the explanation is the foundational stories of each franchise.
Okay, so I talk a lot about stories and narratives when I talk about the basis for fandom. Fandoms are subcultures, and the thing that connects these subcultures are the stories and narratives that are shared, right? So a fan that's been following the Chicago Bears since the 1960s has stories about Gale Sayers, Walter Payton, and then some dark ages through the last couple of decades.
These are the stories that all Bears fans. No, right? These are the stories that an older Bears fan can communicate to a younger Bears fan. When we think about, and when we say why is this franchise at this point and this franchise is ranked down here? It probably does come down to the narratives, the legends that each team has built over time.
Now, there's a lot of logic to this, right? Because what builds great sports stories? In general, it ends up being great performances and winning teams. So when I go through the, when I go through this, I will spend a bunch of time, notes on each thinking about where the brands have been for each of the teams and how the brands have been constructed over time.
In particular, things like the number of Super Bowls the team has, but I, and I'll tell you the other one that I think is absolutely critical that may seem a little bit strange at first. is I will always focus on the great quarterbacks a franchise has had. In some ways, the Mount Rushmore of each team's quarterbacks ends up being one of the easiest ways to explain why a fandom is either at the top of the league or it's ranked near the bottom.
Okay, at number 32, and you gotta remember, there are no bad NFL fandoms, right? It is the dominant American sports league. Like I said, it's maybe the only remaining cultural unifier, but at number 32, I've got the Arizona Cardinals. Okay, now this is, in terms of market signals, 30th in terms of pricing. 28th in social media.
In a market that's really not too bad. Phoenix is not a giant market, but it's definitely above an above average market in terms of population and a decent amount of that's, look, there's been a ton of growth in the Sunbelt and Phoenix is a market that has grown dramatically over time.
So it gets us to this question of why are the, Sorry, the Arizona Cardinals, and again, that was not intentional. One of the issues with the Cardinals, so if we think about the foundational stories for the Cardinals, we gotta go back to where this franchise started. This was the St. Louis Cardinal, right?
Their all time great quarterback was Jim Hart. Then the team was relocated to Arizona, and originally it was called the Phoenix Cardinals. Then the name was again changed to be the Arizona Cardinals. The all time great quarterbacks for the franchise, Jim Hart, okay, St. Louis guy. Neil Lomax, mostly a St.
Louis guy. Jake Plummer, Okay, fine quarterbacks, but nothing that's going to come top of mind when you ask NFL fans to name, to come up with a list of all time great QBs. The franchise has never won a quarter never won a Super Bowl, right? That's a huge part of the story. More recently, over the last, www.
fandomanalytics. com, Kawhii Leonard, Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic, Professors. fm, Caitlin Clark, Doug Battle, But recently Marvin Harrison Jr. has arrived, so the narrative for this team is one of hope, but at the moment I've got them ranked number 32.
At 31, we've got the Los Angeles Chargers. Okay. In terms of fandom outcomes, the Chargers do okay in attendance. On the other hand, they're bottom five in social media. Now, the problem is that this is happening in the LA market, right? So one of the most lucrative possible markets. Now again, you could push back and say look, LA's got a lot of people, they've got a lot of money, but there's other things to do in Los Angeles, right?
It's more of an entertainment oriented city than a sports city. The weather is great. And look, this is one of the things that we'll probably see throughout the rankings is that Somehow, great sports fandom is negatively correlated with great weather. Two problems, two big problems for the LA Chargers.
When I think about the foundational stories for this club, and again, it comes back to the names. You got Dan Fouts. Kellen Winslow, LaDainian Tomlinson, Junior Seau, Philip Rivers. Okay? These are not names that I associate with the LA Chargers. So again, this kind of move ends up being incredibly difficult to overcome.
You can be a successful team, you can make a lot of money, you can win Super Bowls, fandom, having stability across generation seems to be absolutely one of the key components. Now And I'll come back to this again when we get to the Rams. To me, one of the most interesting fandom stories at the moment in LA is which of these teams, the Chargers or the Rams, is going to emerge as the dominant LA team.
On the plus side, at the moment, I think there is some real hope and enthusiasm for the Chargers. Justin Herbert is a Really talented young player. When I look at the metrics, this guy has been tremendous, especially in his first couple of seasons. But the real question is, again, what level is he going to get to?
Is he going to be one of these top five legacy building guys? Or is he going to be a top 10 guy that gets you into the playoffs most years, but doesn't win titles?
Alright, at number 30 we got the Washington Commanders. As I've been doing these rankings for really the last decade One of the things I've noticed is there tends to be a lot of anger if fanbases are ranked low. The one exception to that is the Washington Commanders. Their fans seem to almost revel in being ranked low.
And look, it's a reflection of where this franchise has been. Really, over about the last 15 years, the Dan Schneider, the naming controversies. It's a tough thing, though, because the Washington football team, back in the days when it was the Redskins, was really one of the marquee, one of the iconic teams in the leagues.
Almost the classic Monday Night Football matchup was the Dallas Cowboys against the Washington Redskins. When you think about the foundational stories for the Redskins, you got the Hogs, you got Joe Theismann, Billy Kilmer, John Riggins, Art Monk, Daryl Green. I mean it goes on and on. But clearly this thing blew up through some mismanagement on the field in terms of bad free agent signings, some poor drafts.
And again, and finding itself a team, an NFL team finding itself in the middle of the culture wars to the point where newspapers would write about them as the Washington NFL franchise. So it's really been a fall from grace when I started doing these rankings. The Washington team was a clear top 10 team.
Now they are almost always at the bottom five of the league. When you look at the, when you look at the fandom metrics, 27 in attendance, 26 in social media, and the Washington D. C. market, the amount of money in our nation's capital, this is really a prime market. On top of all of this, the rebranding away from the Redskins name has been A disaster.
The move from, and look, I'm actually on record as saying, I like the Washington football team name. It almost has a, it was distinctive. It was different, a little bit of a Euro soccer type feel, but to go from the Redskins to the Washington football team, and then to change it again to something.
Extremely generic, like the commanders has really left this fan base reeling. Now again, like a lot of the teams near the bottom, there is a little bit of hope. They've got a very high draft pick coming in from LSU. But at the moment, this is a team that feels almost more this is a legacy, a team with a great legacy that feels more like an expansion club in terms of fandom.
At 29, we've got the Tennessee Titans. Okay, the Titans struggle on all the fandom outcome metrics. Pricing, attendance, social. Obviously, the big problem here is the foundational stories. When you look at the top QBs in franchise history, it's extremely limited. Great running backs. Obviously Eddie George, Derek Henry, Earl Campbell.
Might be the greatest running back, Mount Rushmore in the league, but in terms of quarterbacks, what are you talking about? Warren Moon, Steve McNair, right? And Warren Moon was a Houston guy. So again, we're back to the same kind of issue, a lack of foundational stories, a lack of Super Bowl championships.
And again, this fandom killing idea of moving teams and changing the names is definitely one of the issues for the Tennessee Titans. Used to be the Houston Oilers, right?
At 28, I've got the Indianapolis Colts. This is the first one on the countdown that I expect to get some pushback on. I think Colts fans have a good deal of pride. Look, this is a quantitative based analysis. I'm not saying, look, again, let's emphasize this point. There are no bad fandoms in the NFL.
There's tremendous passion across all the markets, but when you look at this analytically and you look at the actual numbers, teams like the Colts fall a little bit short of what they're. The Cults are, and I'll give you a sort of the big one, 30th in social media, right? So the Colts have a lack of passion and awareness that extends beyond Indianapolis.
Now, I've talked a lot about foundational stories and quarterbacks. The Colts are an interesting one in this discussion, right? Cause the Colts have Peyton Manning, might've been regarded as the goat. The At least in terms of performance until Tom Brady trampled on all his records. And Johnny Unitas, right?
Two Superbowls, 1970 and 2006. So there is some foundational stories, great QBs, some Superbowls. But some of this is pretty distant. And again this theme in this bottom quad of teams this idea that moving is really detrimental. So you got to remember it was originally the Baltimore Colts and their move to Indianapolis was really almost scandalous with the moving trucks, packing up the team and leaving in the middle of the night.
So again, we got this issue of. Plugging a team into a city without this generational fandom. And the fandom struggles for decades and decades, at least relative to other NFL teams.
At 27, I got the Jacksonville Jaguars. This might be one of the clubs that people feel I'm ranking too high. The Jaguars have struggled to really make a name for themselves as a iconic or successful NFL team. The reality is Jacksonville is probably a little bit of a tough market for several reasons.
Relatively light in terms of population. Almost no media spotlight ever shined on Jacksonville. And the big one, The Jaguars come into Jacksonville, but you're entering a state that is already dominated by another team, and that's the Florida Gators and maybe the FSU Seminoles, so they face more competition than a lot of their NFL teams.
Look in the Northeast. The NFL is king in the southeast. The SEC has a say in the conversation and is very competitive in terms of attracting fans. Now, when we go into the details and we think about the foundational stories for the Jags, again, let's focus on quarterbacks top two. Passers and all and the Jaguar's history are Mark Brune and Blake Bortles.
Again, there's, these are not the names that are come gonna come to mind when NFL fans are talking about. the great and the inspiring quarterbacks. It look, it's a team that has tried I in turn, when I was searching around, doing some research for this piece, I found a video, a promo from mustache day.
I think they had purchased 50, 000 K mustaches for Gardner Minshew Day, essentially at the Jaguars park. So it's a team that is. kawhii. com and trying, but it's a team that has continued to struggle. Now look, they have Trevor Lawrence. So like a lot of the teams at the bottom of the list, who've been drafting high, they've got a franchise that they hope is turns out to be a top five guy that starts to build a legacy of Super Bowls.
At 26, we've got the L. A. Rams. Okay, so this is essentially part two of the L. A. story. Very similar to the LA charger story in some ways. It's a team that started out in L. A., moved to St. Louis, came back, um, some actual success on field a recent Super Bowl new stadium, five out of the last seven years in the playoffs, and so this is, the Rams are a little bit of a strange case.
You would think that they would have started to build some real enthusiasm, But you know what? And here's a key signal for them 24th and social. So the LA market, a lot of glitz, a lot of glamor, recent Superbowl, and no appreciable national following. So again, what are the stories? I guess the big one is if you don't move once and certainly don't move twice.
When you think about the all time great Rams, It's not a bad list. And again, Marshall Falk, Eric Dickerson, Deacon Jones, defense and running backs, which, reinforces my point that the key is to almost always look at the quarterbacks. So the top Rams quarterbacks of all time. Jim Everett, Mark Bulger, Romain Gabriel, again, not the guys that come to mind when you're having a discussion about the all time great QBs, not the Tom Brady's, not the not the Peyton Manning's, not the Patrick Mahomes.
The LA story is again an interesting one. It's a tough market. Should be a great market, but clearly a tough market. The fact that there's a lot of people and a lot of money doesn't seem to play out for the NFL. Maybe it's a slow build situation, but the question is who's actually going to win this competition?
It seems like the Rams are ahead. Chargers might have the better young quarterback. So which of these teams gets to join the Dodgers and the Lakers and which of these teams ends up in the second tier with the Clippers and the Angels?
At 25, I've got the Detroit Lions. Now, I gotta be honest with you, the Lions are one of the fanbases I truly root for. And I suspect Lion fandom could be a sleeping giant. This team has A lot of positives at the moment, right? They've started to win. They've got an amazingly compelling coach in Dan Campbell and strangely, they might have the most fun NFL Superfan Celebrity fan in Eminem.
It's also a great way to It's also the classic cold weather Midwestern city that tends to breed great sports fandom. Now, what is the problem that the, think about Detroit fandom for the Red Wings, right? That should also be possible for the for the Lions. Now, the problem, of course, is that.
is the legacy of winning in Detroit, or really the lack of winning. Up until last year, it was almost comical. If you went back, I think it was that the Lions had not won a playoff game in about 30 years, right? One of the questions in fandom is always like, how long can you lose? And I think the Lions were probably approaching that.
It's just that Detroit is such a great place for sports fans that it will always, like it seemingly will always rebound in terms of other, foundational stories in terms of great players, Barry Sanders, but not much beyond Barry.
That was quad four. So the bottom quarter of NFL fandoms. There's some real consistency in the themes that, that connect the, the teams that have really struggled to build great NFL fandoms. A lot of moves. A lot of name changes, a lot of, well, a lot of lack of winning in terms of not winning a bunch of Super Bowls.
And so we start to see some real lessons in terms of how you build cultural fandoms fandoms for cultural brands. You've got to be successful and you've got to be consistent. You know, I mean, The issue of name changes and moves. I think that's something that we, it's both obvious, but I think it's also something that should really be emphasized.
If you're part of culture, a part of a society, which is really what sports brands are, because they're, They're really linked to cities. The names are the, essentially the names that fans relate to. So you've got to, you know, you've got to maintain consistency on those structures that allow the fan to have a long term relationship with your brand.
Text. Our quad three teams. So these are teams that are in that in their group that quarter of teams that's slightly below average in terms of fandom performance. But not at the, at the bottom level. Our first entry at number 24 is the Cincinnati Bengals. Okay. The Bengals are a historical NFL losing franchise, right. A struggling franchise.
You think about. The division the Bengals have been in it's, you know, it's, it's losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers. I think the Steelers fans call them the bungles in the AFC north. Now they have to contest with both the Steelers and the Ravens. When you look at the, the history of the Bengals, it's not filled with a lot of glory.
So again, we come back to the foundational stories. And inevitably it's winning and greatness. That is what connects the fans and builds the fandom. The all-time great Bengals. Chad Johnson, Kenny Anderson, Anthony Munez, boomer. Esiason it's not too bad. But the franchise is all win three in Superbowls. It's a non-glamorous market. Now the thing about the Bengals and the Bengals are on a bit of an upswing over the last couple of years, they've actually been slowly starting to build in the rankings, build in their position. And that's that they've got, they've got, I think the next great NFL star and Joe burrow. Endless swagger combined with amazing likeability.
So I think, I think they've got the most marketable young quarterback. Now you look at what's happened with the Bengals since he arrived and they went from. Look, you go back and before burrow arrived, it was either losing the wild card or not make the playoffs for about a 25 or 30 year period. Now they're going to the Superbowl.
They're going to the playoffs on a regular basis. They haven't gotten over the hump, but if they start winning super bowls, With a guy that looks a little bit like Macaulay Culkin, but as smoking a cigar in his all blinged out the sky is the limits. The bingos could become one of those. One of those second tier markets. But where it's really cool to be a fan of their team.
At number 23, we've got the Miami Dolphins. They're an interesting case, because when we think about, let's say, foundational stories, again, I'll keep repeating that, as the narratives that connect the fanbase, Miami has, they've got quite a few. Miami was one of the dominant teams in the early NFL. Now that might seem like a long time ago, two Super Bowls in the 70s, but that's how Pittsburgh and Dallas really built themselves out.
In terms of all time greats, you've got Larry Zonka, you've got Dan Marino, you've got Bob Greasy, right? So you've got stuff from that foundational, that early era of the NFL that has really helped build a lot of franchises, stardom that resonates until today. I think what the challenge is for the Dolphins, Is they've got a little bit, their legacy performers, their legends are sort of, they've had some struggles like Marino never winning a Superbowl.
If Marino had beat the 49ers in 1985 and won another Superbowl after that, the Dolphins may have found themselves in that upper echelon of NFL brands. I think the other thing that happens is. is that Miami has historically been a tough city for professional sports. It's not, it's a good weather city.
There's a lot of movement in terms of population. So it's, It doesn't feel like one of these big Northeastern markets where there's generations of fans that have lived their whole lives in Boston or New York, let's say that end up just being hardcore fans of the local teams. I think the other thing that we should note about Miami.
is that I suspect that city has turned over quite a bit in terms of demographics. And so it's a very fundamentally different city in 2024 than it was in 1970. And I think this is really important when you think about community and intergenerational transfer of fandom.
At number 22, we've got a shocking team, and that's the Chicago Bears. The Bears should probably be a quad one team, if things had broken a little bit different, if management had been a little bit more successful. You look at the Bears fandom metrics, they price fairly high, attendance is very low, cause Soldier Field tends to be, is on the small side.
Number 15 in terms of social media. So think about that, a giant market, with the history of the Bears, very middling results in terms of national fandom. Now, when I say with the history of the Bears, there are few teams that have the legacy of the Bears. Dick Buckus, Brian Urlacher, Mike Singletary. Think about this in terms of the linebackers, Gail Sayers Walter Payton and the running back side, Mike Ditka, maybe the coach that most broke through as a popular culture icon, but what's gone wrong.
What's gone wrong is there's not been a lot of success since, look, the city of Chicago is 1985 Bears. We're coming up on. 40 years. If you look more recently, they've only been in the playoffs twice, I think, since 2010. Two wildcard losses. I, see, I can't say enough about the Bears. The Bears fandom even inspired an SNL skit about Da Bears and Mike Ditka fighting Godzilla.
This is the most shocking outcome in terms of the analysis. To clarify what's going on though, look up the Bears top passers of all time. I'll read you the list. Jay Cutler, 2, Sid Luckman, 3, Jim Harbaugh, 4, Jim McMahon, 5, Mitchell Trubisky. This is a tough situation. Now the Bears probably have some hope, Caleb Williams, but for Bears fans, they're probably starting to feel cursed, right?
They had Mitchell Trubisky as a high draft pick. They had Justin Fields as another. What is Caleb Williams gonna do?
At number 21 from the Twin Cities, we've got the Minnesota Vikings. Again, not a team with a bad legacy. Fran Tarkington, Chris Carter, Alan Page. It's not a bad situation in terms of having big names, prominent players. But For the Vikings, maybe the biggest statistic, the biggest number is 0 4 in Super Bowls.
So the Vikings have been one of those teams that is usually pretty good, but has never gotten over the hump. So they've been decent, but they've never been able to create those stories that truly resonate with the fan base. That truly end up being connectors across across the city and across and across the generation.
www. fandomanalytics. com You look at the top passers for the Vikings, you got Fran Tarkenton, Tommy Kramer, and then Kirk Cousins. And I go through that list because Kirk Cousins was not the answer in Minnesota, but may be viewed as the answer in Atlanta. So it's an interesting thing. where Kirk Cousins was in some ways the face of the franchise, maybe the most well known Viking, the guy that connects the fan base and Minnesota sent him packing, whereas another NFL team was happy to pay him a at least a hundred million guaranteed and maybe 180 million.
At number 20 we've got another big market team in the New York Jets. I love Jets fandom. I think they should probably be higher on the list. So it's an interesting question of why they're not higher on the list. The Jets fans, look, they got the, maybe the best cheer in the NFL, just spelling out the name.
The Jets did great. The Jets fans did great work at all the NFL drafts. I wish they had not moved this to take it out on the road. But what the problem that Jets have is they've got one Super Bowl, but it was a long time ago. You look at the quarterbacks, the guys that. Build the stories that connect the fandom and you got in terms of your past, your top passers, you got Joe Namath, Ken O'Brien, Richard Todd, Chad Pennington.
This is not going to be the thing that's gonna these are not legends that's going to create a fan base that's gonna really move beyond Long Island and New York City. And more recent times, no playoffs in more than a decade. But look, I love the Jets. In some ways, this upcoming season, the Jets are one of the best stories going with Mr.
Aaron Rodgers playing for the legacy of his career to build on what he did in Green Bay. You got maybe one of the most, one of the two, three most interesting players and one of the two, three most high potential in terms of growth fan bases. It could be a great season in New York.
At number 19, we've got the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It's probably a decent showing for a Florida team. As I mentioned, Florida is SCC country. As all these Florida teams came into being, they were competing with the the Florida, and not a not an SCC team, Florida State. The University of Miami, so it's a really competitive football environment.
The Bucs have two Super Bowls not a lot of, look, some great names for the Buccaneers, Leroy Selman back in the day Warren Sapp, but on the quarterback front, the top passers are Jamez Winston, Testaverde. Do you know Brady is the third all time passer for the Bucs, right? So Brady's not, I don't think most fans are ever going to really associate Brady with the Bucs.
Brady is a Patriot, but for him to have accomplished that much, and Moving up the ranks of the Buccaneers quarterbacks in just a few seasons is really amazing and just reveals the weakness the quarterback position has had for the Bucs. And at the end of the day, the quarterback really is the key towards building the building fandom.
At number 18 we've got the Falcons, 22nd in attendance, sorry, 22nd in pricing, 16th in attendance, 14th in social media. These are not bad numbers particularly for a team that has historically struggled like the Falcons. The Falcons have done great work and are definitely one of the teams that has moved up the ranks over the last decade.
New stadium, a trip to the Super Bowl. It's always going to be a bit of a challenge. I mentioned some of the Florida teams competing with the SEC. The Falcons have a tough local competitor in UGA. I live in Atlanta and you can't help but notice the strength of the UGA fandom. All these black G's on the back of essentially pickup trucks, usually pickup trucks.
So the Falcons are in a cutthroat environment. For football, but they've done some genuinely nice work in terms of moving up to the point where they are really just about at the level of the average NFL fan base, which is really impressive. When you think back to, Atlanta Falcons fans almost feeling cursed.
And I remember, I think it was about a decade ago when the Falcons were playing the Steelers and the stadium was yellow and black down here in Atlanta. I think the Falcons have gone on beyond that and are now a very solid NFL fandom.
The final team in Quad 2, so just below the midpoint of NFL fandoms, are the Buffalo Bills, and this one pains me, because like I said, there's a few fandoms I root for, and the Buffalo Bills fandom, the Bills Mafia, is definitely one of them. The Mafia has become notorious over the last couple of years jumping through flaming tables, it's gonna be a great visual, but it also It's very clear, like the Buffalo Bills fandom might not be great on these economic metrics, but it's also very clear that Bills fans truly love, and the Bills are truly part of the Buffalo community.
The Buffalo, and I think part of the reason why I root for Bills fandom is the Buffalo community has taken serious hard knocks over the last few years in terms of weather and mass shootings even. And so this is. The Bills fans are not just the fans of an NFL team. I think they're really an expression of the Buffalo community relative to the outside world.
The Bills, and again, maybe more so than any other NFL franchise, short of Green Bay, The Bills are big part of Buffalo's identity. Now the Bill's legacy is complicated because the Bill's actually have a great history in terms of the Mount Rushmore of players, Jim Kelly Jim.
Thurman Thomas, Bruce Allen. And again, here's the tough thing about the Bills. O. J. Simpson, the original all time great NFL runner, more than 2, 000 yards in a season, but clearly a legacy that is an absolute disaster. The best Bills team, so the best Bills player, OJ Simpson, all sorts of problems.
The best Bills team was 0 4 in Super Bowls. So it's a team that truly does almost feel a little bit cursed, but it's a community that really does, has embraced the Bills with a truly engaged and passionate fandom. Are things starting to change? Five straight playoff appearances. Josh Allen, one of the, one of the best young quarterbacks, maybe not even a young quarterback anymore.
We're getting to the point where can Josh Allen take him, Josh Allen take him over the hump, start to win Super Bowls, or is it going to be more of the same of the Bills always coming up a little bit short?
All right, we're going to end this episode here at the conclusion of quad three some summary comments about quad three. It's a mixed group of teams. We've got some big market teams, some markets that are, that have struggled some teams with, Decent historical legacies, some teams that have just often come up a little bit short.
I think the thing that truly connects these teams though, truly connects all of quad three, is that these are teams that have lacked having that elite quarterback, right? So again, the quarterback position, Really is the key to generational NFL fandom, having the guy that is, he is him having the guy that is recognized as one of the all time greats.
Because what comes with that, what comes with that is winning Super Bowls and that's what. That brings everything together and creates truly amazing fan bases. Like I said, we'll leave it here. I'll pick up next week with Quad Two and Quad One, the upper half of the NFL. I'm not keeping you guys on suspense.
The podcast is really more for a long Term exploration of the issues, getting more into the analytics and more into the details. You can find the full rankings at my website, which is www.fandomanalytics.com. You can also follow me on social, on everything, TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram, and I'll put links to, to those handles on the Phantom analytics page as well.
So I will talk to you guys soon. Going through Quad 2 and Quad 1, getting into the elite of the NFL fanbases, and we'll conclude that episode by also getting into a little bit more of the nitty gritty, the limitations and the caveats to these analyses.