The Geography of College Football

The NY Times Nate Silver put together a very interesting survey/guesstimation of the fan bases in each major TV market and thus how strong each College's fan base actually is.
http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/the-geography-of-college-football-fans-and-realignment-chaos/

According to the study, the ten most popular teams in college football are as follows:

1. Ohio State
2. Michigan
3. Penn State
4. Notre Dame
5. Texas
6. Texas A&M
7. Auburn
8. Alabama
9. Florida
10. Clemson

The survey is interesting in that I think they nailed the likely 10 most popular teams in the country, but there are certain facts that seem a bit off.  There's just no way that Rutgers is siphoning off over 500,000 fans from the greater NY area.  They rarely sell out their games, and most New Yorkers I know are fans of Penn State, Notre Dame, or Syracuse.

I find it hard to believe that UH has fewer fans than Rice or Tulane.  Even if those numbers are slightly off, it goes to show you how far the Cougars have to go to make themselves relevant again.