When Rutgers was added to the B1G, WSJ came out with a report that combined ‘official’ alumni numbers with fans of college football in NYC. It’s behind a paywall.
As the Big Apple prepares to host ESPN’s College GameDay for the first time, The Wall Street Journal planted spies along the city’s top running routes to gauge which school’s alumni are most rabid
www.wsj.com
Rutgers was far and away #1, which makes sense considering the size of the school and how close it is. Syracuse and UConn were the next two and basically tied. ND came in at #4 by combining a mix of actual ND alumni and those who graduated from other Catholic colleges who are also loyal to ND as football fans (BC who?). Penn St. was 5th, which is understandable based on how big it is both in terms of students (40K undergraduates at University Park v. 24K in Storrs, which is 10K more than just 20 years ago), college football history, and that it is just 100 miles further from NYC than Storrs (btw, same distance as Syracuse).