- February 10th, 2023, 9:30 pm
#651664
The population is 281,247 within a 30 mile of radius of campus. Here's the P5s in that ballpark.
Auburn-303,477
Penn State-302,707
Baylor-293,786
Texas A&M-288,208
Alabama-249,918
Illinois-274,733
Mississippi State-169,050
Ole Miss-151,719
Washington State-145,369
Kansas State-141,614
Oklahoma State-133,645
Of course we will never have the backing of the locals like the teams on this list but I believe only Washington state and maybe K state from this list would be considered to have a small fanbase. I agree with purple haize that this issue should improve over time as the university grows and more alumni stay in the area and have kids that grow up fans of the school. We've only been above 10,000 students on campus for about 20 years and 15,000 students for about 5 years so it'll take time.
The size of the fanbase near campus is important because those are generally the diehards creating the buzz around the school/programs but the size of the fanbase around the country will be equally if not more important for us in realignment. From the eyeball test it seems like i see more red during away games than a few years ago but if we can get to the point where hundreds of flames fans are going to our away games I will feel like we are officially a national brand and that's something that conferences will notice. In that respect we have a long way to go but hopefully being on national TV several times a year (and winning more) expedites that process. In the meantime I'm enjoying the ride.