Walmart Fighting Irish - teams with most non-alumni fans
While this is obviously not scientific - this is sports after all - the results are kind of interesting.
Michigan doesn't make the top ten for percentage of alumnus as fans (on facebook), we're at 11% (State 19%, OSU 13%) while the leader in the clubhouse is Notre Dame with 4%
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Also interesting... is that Northwestern? They have sports fans? weird...
On the other end of the spectrum:
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http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2015/6/2/8622799/college-fans-…
I don't get the whole "Walmart XXX" fan thing as an insult.
It's an honor to have people not directly associated with your school want to be a fan of it. It means you have something going on.
Nobody cares about Purdue unless you went there, and then even half of them don't care.
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Thank you. It means you are a national "brand".
Walmart is a very large sophisticated retailer. They don't have time to stock merchandise nobody cares about.
Good luck finding a State sweatshirt outside of a Lansing Walmart.
I read the OP and I was like "Really? Walmart Fighting Irish? Really??"
The term for ND is Subway Alumni.
I am sorry if I am being gullible here, but is it really? That would be hilarious.
Fighting Rent-to-Owners?
Used to be a term for fans in NYC who'd take the subway to watch ND when they came to town. Now the term is for any of their non-alumni fans.
And, it's because of all of those so-called Walmart fans that Nike/UA/Adidas gives Michigan massive apparel deals the type of which only few other schools could even dream.
Exactly, and TV ratings leader to better bowl games, and etc.
I will go on record and say that some of the worst Michigan fans that I know of, I met while a student. Contsantly trashing John Navarre and booing him every chance they got, calling him "gay" and etc... John Navarre was a good kid, did charity, kept his nose clean, tried his best and etc...he actually had good Junior and Senior year stats. He didn't deserve the constantly harsh criticism.
This has been my response to Sparties (sp? It doesn't matter) for years when they throw around the term "Walmart Wolverines" or Walmart Fans.
You know who else has Walmart fans? ND, OSU, Texas, USC, Florida, UGA...
Pretty much any school that has an exceptional football history and takes more than a legible spelling of your first and last name to gain acceptance to. I welcome all Walmart Wolverines because I know not everyone can attend our great university for different reasons, yet they still want to be apart of Michigan.
You know who doesn't have Walmart fans? Teams that historically only matter for 8 out of every 30 years. Schools that accept every applicant with a heartbeat and don't have alumni in every corner of the earth.
Walmart Wolverines? Sounds good to me.
A lot of Spartans bring this up as part of the inferiority complex. They are upset that Michigan has more fans so they find a way to turn it in to a negative. Hence..."Most Michigan fans didn't go to school there." When the same exact statement can be said about MSU, just they are too irrational to realize that second point.
Well, they've finally come around to acknowledging the fact that they have mostly non-alum fans, so they've shifted the goalposts. Now it's, "Well, Michigan fans are particularly trashy," something which they know is both juvenile and can't be quantified, and also, "Yeah, but Michigan non-alum fans will talk shit to MSU grads about how Michigan's a better school," which I've heard obvious total idiots say a handful of times in my life. If you want to base your opinion on one guy with a mullet you had an altercation with at the local small-town dive, fine, but that's what you should expect when slumming it, ya cheap bastard.
We live in America. You may cheer for whatever team your little heart desires. #murica
loves your avatar.
Wolverine meme was developed by Sparty towards their fans defection to UM after they beat them game after game. Then they were decent in hoops and tried to carry it over as if they were a high end brand or something. Yet one more time Sparty misdirection in essence is making fun of their own fan base.
It's just a way of MSU fans justifying to themselves why everyone likes Michigan more. I've never heard a single other fanbase complain about 'walmart fans' but MSU
*Cough* little brother *Cough*
I didn't go to Michigan, but I'm more of Barney's Wolverine!
I'm not a grad of UM but I'm a huge fan and have been since before I can remember. If this is just statistics, fine, great. But if its some sort of commentary on something or another, then I think that's a very sparty-ish attitude.
No one should care if you went to the school or not.
I once heard an MSU fan bashing UofM for having many non-alumni fans, when he went to WMU. I pointed this out to him and asked him if he was less of a MSU fan and the point went right over his head as he continued on about UofM having more non-alumni fans than MSU.
All schools have more non-alumni fans. If you doubt this, look at all of the fans who are in elementary, junior high, and high school.
Notre Dame should be proud of its appeal to draw in so many non-alumni fans. My hat is off to them. They have an awesome tradition and program, plus the Catholic angle doesn't hurt either for getting more fans.
I got my BA from UofM and that doesn't make me more or less of a fan than someone who never went to any college, but cheers on the team.
I agree with this completely, and I don't actually think the 'Walmart XXX' thing is an insult.
Much to your point, I was surprised to see there is a school where more than half of the 'fans' were in fact alums (A&M)... but I live in Austin, so plenty of my colleagues will enjoy this
Let's face it, A&M is wierd. You're not likely to be a fan of it unless you went there.
The SEC may change that somewhat, but they are never going to be national like TX. If they aren't winning big or playing TX, nobody is going to talk about them.
My nuts agree.
Completely agree. I got my undergrad degree from WMU and Masters now from U-M. Never did my fanhood increase once I came to Ann Arbor. It's just Sparty's inferiority complex showing its colors.
I mean, who in their right mind would be an MSU fan without having any association with the University?
My story is similar; went to EMU for undergrad and recently went to UM for grad school.
I've been on both sides of this, but the reality is that my - much older - sister took me to a game when I was very young and she was a student, and after that I was hooked.
Never really cared that I didn't go to school there, but I'm now a very proud alum and don't care where our fans come from.
sleeveless shirt mullet-hicks from the north shore. those mouth breathers are only one step more evolved than cooler-pooping OSU trash.
Good grief, football programs from the "Top 10" combined for about 20 wins, most of which came from MSST. That's a pretty pathetic group of basketball teams, too.
I fully expect to see Michigan gear in my northern Virginia Walmarts sometime this season. And if they are smart, they'll display the gear next to the khakis.
The Northwestern thing is not that strange. The metric is % of fans, not number of fans.
Northwestern does not have a large number of fans, but a large percent of the fans they do have are non-alumni, given their prime Chicago location.
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of Northwestern alums were never fans. That's probably true for any school without much athletic success that draws its students primarily from out of state. It's reflected in their attendance.
It was a bad article. The question in the title was never answered. Only talking about percentages leaves out a lot of the story.
Just to make sure I am interpreting correctly:
"Bottom 10" (list on top) is highest percentage of Walmarters
"Top 10" (list on bottom) is lowest percentage of Walmarters
Notre Dame has most Walmart (Subway) fanbase, Texas A&M has least
Do I have this right??
You nailed it! ;)
By that same method (and they do provide the full table), here is how the Big Ten would stack up:
| SCHOOL | PCT |
| Purdue | 33% |
| Illinois | 32% |
| Maryland | 28% |
| Rutgers | 28% |
| Penn State | 25% |
| Indiana | 24% |
| Michigan St. | 19% |
| Nebraska | 16% |
| Ohio State | 13% |
| Michigan | 11% |
| Iowa | 11% |
| Minnesota | 11% |
| Northwestern | 9% |
| Wisconsin | 8% |
I am going to go ahead and say that lower is better if we have to qualify it. I am surprised that Ohio State isn't lower even though they have a large student body.
I think this is where the methodology comes in... Its based on facebook, so maybe an OSU alum is more likely to be a fan on facebook than a ND or Michigan alum; hence the ratio is off a touch
I don't think so.
You have to be able to read to use Facebook.
Their fandom is intense inside Ohio. Outside that, it drops way off.
We are much more of a national program than they are. They got a bump up because of their recent football success, but when they are not winning at that level, they drop back.
Michigan is still ahead of them on a national level . . . despite the fact that we have been terrible.
If you were able to do one of these things in the 90's, we'd be way ahead of them.
That's not true. Buckeye fans are everywhere. They travel, they move out of Ohio. Arizona is like Ohio Jr.
Yes but tha's just Ohio people that moved away from Ohio. You do tend to see Buckeye fans in places that Ohio people move to, like AZ and the west coast of Florida.
But you don't see a ton of people that have no connection to Ohio State or the state of Ohio (i.e. lifelong Buckeye fans) become Ohio State fans.
They are only "national" when Ohio people flee Ohio.
I think they're probably as prevalent nation-wide as Michigan fans. I think Michigan alumni are more likely to be from all over the place than Ohio though.
Minnesota is kind of odd. I would think that the only people that care about the Gophers are people that went there, even within Minneapolis. Then add to that the large shadow cast by the Vikings, and I'm surprised there is any non-alumni-fan air left in the room for Minny to breathe.
When I was a kid, I viewed Michigan and MSU football and basketball just like the Lions and Pistons. I could follow the teams in the newspaper, they were on TV, they all played in large arenas or stadiums.
It's a dumb argument that you need to go to the school to be a fan. It's the University of MICHIGAN, so if you live in that state you just might have an affinity for that school's teams. I root for Detroit pro teams cause they were geographically closest to me. Same thing.
Some people almost sound like college football should be exclusively for people that went to the larger universities.
That being said--non-alum fans who tend only to care about UM sports need to realize that those of us who actually did go to Michigan have a much different relationship with the university, and may have different ideas or values about Michigan that transcend athletics. That's all.
As a non-alumnus, I can certainly agree with your point. I bring up the academic ratings, but only because I know it annoys the hell out of all the Buckeye fans who know I didn't go to school there. I actually enrolled at OSU but never attended. I would have finished my bachelors there and applied at their business school if not for a couple other life events that prevented me from doing so. I'm as big a Michigan athletics fan as anyone, and that will never change, no matter what else happens in life. It was engrained early, and there's no changing my mind. It's very similar to a religion. If someone is indoctrinated at an early enough age, it's nearly impossible to get them to change their allegiance.
This *1000000000.
Both of my grandfathers were ND fans. One was Italian and the other Irish.
Notre Dame's huge popularity is due primarily to this.