Football season may have just wrapped up, but Alabama has come close to taking one more title. A study by Wallethub found that Tuscaloosa was the second best town in America for college football fans.
Alabama’s 2016 foes, the Clemson Tigers, were said to have the number one hometown for college fans last year.
To calculate their findings, Wallethub factored seven metrics, including the number of college football teams, performance of those teams, championship wins, and ticket prices.
The study also factored the number of Facebook and Twitter “likes” per capita to determine fan engagement in each town. Overall, Alabama was found to have the fifth most engaged fanbase in the nation. Pulling ahead of UA in this category was Clemson, SC (1), East Lansing, MI (2), Chapel Hill, NC (3), and State College, PA (4).
Perhaps not surprising to many Bama fans, the study also found that University of Alabama season tickets were the most expensive to obtain. The face-value price for 2016 season tickets sat at $580, but that doesn’t factor resell markups or the fact that UA has an eight-year wait list for season tickets.
Of the 244 cities that made the top list for college football fans, several other Alabama cities made the cut. They include Jacksonville (24) and Birmingham (100), Troy (126), Auburn (166), Huntsville (192), Montgomery (227), and Mobile (232).
The University of Alabama’s profile has continued to rise, including in the classroom. A recent analysis conducted by TIME Magazine found that UA football players were among some of the highest academically-achieving in the nation. Stanford Cardinal secured the number one spot on the list, and Clemson, Temple, Virginia Tech, and Penn State made up the rest of the top 5. Alabama finished seventh overall.
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