BetOnline Rooting Map - Notre Dame vs. Ohio State
The map below courtesy of BetOnline.ag is based on geotagged X data in the past week, tracking tweets about who fans are rooting for to win the National Championship. This was primarily done by tracking fan hashtags in every state. For example, #GoIrish or #GoBucks. Over 230,000 tweets were tracked.
As you can see from the map, it is VERY clear who America is rooting for. We've been doing these maps for a long time, and we've only seen this kind of disparity in rooting interest a few times - namely the Super Bowls when Tom Brady was playing for the Patriots. We'll likely see it again if the Chiefs make it to the big game (again) this year.
So why is Notre Dame (often looked at as the Evil Empire of college football) now the overwhelming favorite?
A lot of it has to do with the likeability of head coach, Marcus Freeman. In addition, there seems to be a lot of criticism for how much NIL money OSU used to build their roster (around 20 million dollars). It also seems that many college football fans have a negative opinion of Ohio State fans.
A common sentiment online seems to be "Anyone but Ohio State, even if it's Notre Dame.”
Next to Indiana, the state of Michigan had the highest percentage of people rooting for the Fighting Irish.
