Oklahoma football: How do Sooner fans rate on the ‘Happiness’ scale?
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma football fans pride themselves on being among the most passionate in college football.
And why wouldn’t you be with seven national championships to brag about, five Heisman Trophy winners and 10 conference championships in 21 Big 12 seasons. Since then end of World War II, no college team has won more games (628) than the Oklahoma Sooners, lending credence to the rallying cry: “There is only one Oklahoma.”
But the Sooners are not the only college team with a robust fan following far and wide. So where, really, do the fans of Oklahoma football rank on a happiness scale of 1 to 128 that ranges from extreme happiness (1) to total misery (128)? And how does that rank among Big 12 schools as well as in the Sooner State?
The folks at ESPN have come up with some light-hearted college football fan fare to ease some of the building anxiety as the season kickoff fast approaches (just 10 days off).
Introducing the College Football Fan Happiness Index, which is designed, the ESPN editors say, to gauge the fan sentiment at 128 FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) programs. The measurement criteria takes into account six different but related factors:
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Program power: a combination of strength of record. (2012-2016) and the current ranking in the ESPN Football Power Index compared to recent history.
Rivalry dominance: Combination of wins above expectation over rivals in the past five seasons and how a team’s FPI compares to its rivals.
Coaching stability: How close is a coach to being fired?
Recruiting trend: Percentage of five, four and three-star recruits in current class.
Revenue growth: Difference between revenue earned in 2016 and the average revenue between 2012-15.
Twitter buzz: Percentage of tweets from fans that are positive, based on social media sentiment analysis.
Drum roll and the envelope, please.
The happiest college football fan base in America is the fans of the Ohio State Buckeyes. No. 2 is Florida State, followed by Alabama, Louisville, Kansas State — that’s right, K-State — and OKLAHOMA.
Sooner Nation checks in at No. 6 on the ESPN Fan Happiness Index. “Lincoln Riley has that first-year job security, and FPI thinks the Sooners are championship contenders, even if the Twitter buzz hasn’t been as strong,” reads the ESPN text that accompanies the Oklahoma listing in the FHI.
Here is how Sooner fans graded out on the six measurement factors (on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the highest possible score):
Program power: 98
Rivalry dominance: 92
Coaching stability: 66
Recruiting trend: 88
Revenue growth: 81
Twitter buzz: 21
Here is how the fan bases of the other Big 12 teams ranked:
21. TCU
30. Baylor
37. Texas
49. West Virginia
80. Oklahoma State
99. Iowa State
113. Texas Tech
122. Kansas
Fans fell into six different categories in terms of the degree of their happiness. Team ranked 1-25 are categorized as “Elated.”
26-50: “Content”
51-75: “Skeptical”
76-100: “Disappointed”
101-128: “Distraught”