Patriots Are 5th Most Popular Team According to NFL.com Poll

[Joey007]

Poll finds Cowboys to be NFL's most popular team - NFL.com

If the link doesn't work, if someone else would please insert one, I'd appreciate it.

I was a little surprised the Pats were behind the Steelers, but otherwise this was about what I expected. A few other notable things were-

Apparently the Cowboys are still the NFL's most overrated team.

The Jaguars really truly have virtually no fans.

Oh, and best of all, the Jets are waaay down at 19th.

 

[Brady_to_Moss]

Jags have like 0 fans LOL

 

[BradfordPatsFan]

Steelers have an incredibly large and loyal fanbase. Their road games look like Yankees or Red Sox road games, where they have a huge contingent of fans.

 

[Brady_to_Moss]

surprised jets aren't #1..i mean they win a lot...

 

[LetsGoBuffalo]

Oh, the irony.

 

[supafly]

I was a little surprised the Pats were behind the Steelers

Really, Joey?

REALLY???

 

[Jackson 2]

If this is a national sampling, I'm stunned we're that high.

 

[Ghost of Ben Dreith]

The Jesters are at #19.......are you sure this wasn't a power ranking?

 

[patri0t]

Ha, fascinating. Jets and Chargers are quite low, pretty surprised.

 

[Nikolai]

Yeah, I'm surprised the Pats are in the top 5. I'm actually surprised the Jets are as high as 19. They're probably back on the down swing now that people are starting to realize they still suck.

Also, I know a Jags fan. So there's at least one.

 

[DarrylS]

That sounds about right, does anyone remember the days prior to the NFL being top dog???... remember every years getting the JC Penney Catalog or Sears Catalog and looking for Pats Gear.... there would be none, but there would be Dallas, Packers, Giants and Steelers..

This may be a historical issue, and fandom can be passed intergenerationally.

 

[BTTA]

5 teams that carry the league as a national industry. After that, nobody cares outside the immediate geographies.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

This does not prove the Jaguars have no fans. This proves the Jaguars have no fans with internet access.

If they want a true count of Jags fans, they may need some complex interactive pictogram machine like they used to do language experiments on Koko the gorilla.

 

[Jackson 2]

The Jesters are at #19.......are you sure this wasn't a power ranking?

If not for Tebow, they'd be #67...

 

[Calciumee]

Jags have like 0 fans LOL

They do, they just all go to games dressed as empty seats!

 

[LivinLovin&Breathin_Brady]

I'm shocked the Patriots are that low. They're usually in the top 3. Always behind the Steelers and Cowboys. That SB really helped GB out apparently, I haven't seen them in the top 5 before.

 

[PatsFanSince74]

You have to click two links, of course, but eventually you can find out that it's actually a Harris poll taken early last Season of 2,462 folks. (Poll: Like it or not, Cowboys still have America's heart - NFL.com)

So, it has some credibility and wasn't just another bogus internet "poll" that could be "stuffed" by local fans.

Here's what I found interesting (aside from the fact that the Patriots come out in the top 5...I guess we're not as hated as we think).

The gap between #1 and #5 is 2.0 points, but the gap between #1 and #2 is 1.6 points and the gap between #2 and #5 is only 0.4 points meaning that there's really no difference between #2 and #5:

1: Cowboys 8.8
2: Packers 7.2
3: Giants 7.1
4: Steelers 7.1
5: Patriots 6.8

Then, there's a drop of 2.6 points to Da Bears at #6 with 4.2. So, the top 5 are kind of separate from the rest.

Finally, of the top five, the Cowboys and Patriots are "new" teams and the others are all almost as old as the NFL.

Not a bad job of Brand Building in a short time by Robert Kraft, as I doubt very much that the Pats would have been in this same elite company in 1993, when the Cowboys had already been to the SB six times.

 

[tobias funke]

From PFT:

So all we really know is that 132 people in America are Cowboys fans. And that 150 people in America don’t have a favorite NFL team.

It's pretty hard to take a poll like that seriously when there are 33 choices and only 2000 people are polled.

 

[reflexblue]

Can't stand the cowgirls and most of their fans, this just makes it all the schadenfreude sweeter when they implode.....Which has become an annual event.

 

[PatsFanSince74]

From PFT:



It's pretty hard to take a poll like that seriously when there are 33 choices and only 2000 people are polled.

Depends.

On the intent of the poll and the sampling method.

If the intent of the poll is to find the preferences of a randomly selected group of 2,462 people among the adult population of the US, then it probably works pretty well. The margin of error would be less than 2%.

I think this poll is probably directionaly accurate.