This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/CaptainScuttlebottom on 2023-10-25 20:14:19.

What is this?

I’ve been scraping all the game threads on r/CFB this season so that I can take a look at which fanbases are biggest, etc. I’ve received a few requests to get some numbers on how specific rivalries manifest themselves in game threads – specifically, USC / OU fans and Notre Dame / LSU fans wanted to know who was showing up to the others’ game threads to talk shit more often.

I’m able to calculate this by looking at all the neutral commenters in each team’s game threads so far (i.e. for each game, I’m filtering out the team in question and the team they’re playing), and then summing up the most frequently-appearing primary flairs. So for example, Utah flairs’ comments from the USC vs. Utah game are not included in these totals, but Utah flaired comments from other USC games are counted.

And because I also have the total number of users with each primary flair from the census itself, I’m also able to look at it in terms of comments per capita, or comments per unique user on r/CFB. To clean it up a little bit more, I’m also only looking at flairs with at least 75 or more total users.

The results:

USC vs. Oklahoma

Here are the top 10 most common neutral commenters in USC threads:

Rank Team Commentor Flair Total Comments Unique Users Comments per Capita
#1 USC Oklahoma Oklahoma 6,634 1,290 5.14
#2 USC Oregon Oregon 4,194 934 4.49
#3 USC Utah Utah 1,717 528 3.25
#4 USC UCLA UCLA 812 266 3.05
#5 USC Stanford Stanford 314 115 2.73
#6 USC Team Chaos Team Chaos 284 108 2.63
#7 USC Oregon State Oregon State 725 353 2.05
#8 USC Paper Bag Paper Bag 282 139 2.03
#9 USC Washington Washington 1,319 733 1.80
#10 USC Ohio State Ohio State 4,159 2,333 1.78

Here are the top 10 most common neutral commenters in Oklahoma threads:

Rank Team Commentor Flair Total Comments Unique Users Comments per Capita
#1 Oklahoma Paper Bag Paper Bag 319 139 2.29
#2 Oklahoma Oklahoma State Oklahoma State 684 411 1.66
#3 Oklahoma TCU TCU 305 184 1.66
#4 Oklahoma Baylor Baylor 390 260 1.50
#5 Oklahoma SMU SMU 81 83 0.98
#6 Oklahoma Team Chaos Team Chaos 98 108 0.91
#7 Oklahoma Florida State Florida State 795 968 0.82
#8 Oklahoma Texas Tech Texas Tech 308 379 0.81
#9 Oklahoma Georgia Georgia 1,108 1,539 0.72
#10 Oklahoma Texas A&M Texas A&M 636 939 0.68

As the data shows, OU fans are the #1 most common neutral commentator in USC threads, whether you go by comments per capita or just raw totals. The margins are such that their actual conference rivals are actually pretty far behind them. However, USC fans hardly ever show up in OU threads by comparison – they don’t make the top ten, and you actually have to go all the way down to #30 to find them.

Thus, in this rivalry, we can conclude that the hate seems to flow pretty clearly in one direction. This also probably has something to do with the relative success the teams have had this year (there’s been more occasion for OU fans to pile onto USC so far than vice versa), but I think this is pretty conclusive proof that the OU / USC rivalry is largely one-sided, at least on this sub. If you’re a USC fan it proves how unhinged and pathetic we are for our continued obsession; if you’re an OU fan, on the other hand, it obviously just shows how uniquely passionate we are, and how USC only has fairweather fans.

LSU vs. Notre Dame

Here are the top 10 most common commenters in LSU threads:

Rank Team Commentor Flair Total Comments Unique Users Comments per Capita
#1 LSU Paper Bag Paper Bag 417 139 3.00
#2 LSU Ole Miss Ole Miss 457 229 2.00
#3 LSU Alabama Alabama 1,788 1,258 1.42
#4 LSU Georgia Georgia 2,058 1,539 1.34
#5 LSU Notre Dame Notre Dame 1,319 995 1.33
#6 LSU Tennessee Tennessee 1,172 910 1.29
#7 LSU Kentucky Kentucky 419 359 1.17
#8 LSU Texas A&M Texas A&M 1,048 939 1.12
#9 LSU Miami Miami 381 342 1.11
#10 LSU Florida Florida 1,015 929 1.09

Here are the top 10 most common commenters in Notre Dame threads:

Rank Team Commentor Flair Total Comments Unique Users Comments per Capita
#1 Notre Dame Paper Bag Paper Bag 653 139 4.70
#2 Notre Dame Team Chaos Team Chaos 362 108 3.35
#3 Notre Dame Michigan Michigan 5,845 2,265 2.58
#4 Notre Dame Indiana Indiana 491 198 2.48
#5 Notre Dame Oklahoma Oklahoma 2,659 1,290 2.06
#6 Notre Dame Ohio State Ohio State 4,142 2,333 1.78
#7 Notre Dame Illinois Illinois 479 298 1.61
#8 Notre Dame North Carolina North Carolina 500 324 1.54
#9 Notre Dame Arizona State Arizona State 336 228 1.47
#10 Notre Dame Florida State Florida State 1,399 968 1.45

Notre Dame does show up on LSU’s list, at #5 by comments per capita or #3 for total comments. So while it’s not quite as strong as OU’s hate, they definitely still seem to have some raw feelings toward ol’ Cajun Kelly.

LSU doesn’t show up on here until #35 on Notre Dame’s list. So, like USC, they don’t really seem to be reciprocating to nearly the same extent. This kind of checks out with my expectations; it makes sense that the fans who got burned by a coach would care more than the fans of the coach’s new progrum. I also think this sort of explains why Paper Bag topped three of these lists – you have to have a certain amount of investment to care enough to put on the paper bag, and so it makes sense that paper bag flairs would be unusually active.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this! I didn’t have room to fit a table with every team, so if you want to know who the most common neutral flairs are for any other team’s game threads, let me know in the comments.