Which of the state’s flagship college football programs has more fans – Alabama or Auburn?

Students working with Samford University’s Center for Sports Analytics have set out to answer that question last semester and designed an online survey to gauge college football fandom.

The result? Alabama leads with about a little more than half of the survey’s Alabama-based respondents choosing the Crimson Tide and about a third choosing Auburn.

Nearly three-quarters of the survey respondents, about 3,400, were from inside Alabama’s borders.

Results of an online survey designed by students working with Samford University’s Center for Sports Analytics in the fall of 2019.Samford University

A total of 4,807 people began the online survey, which was shared by AL.com, and students cleaned the data by removing “bad” data, such as duplicate respondents and respondents whose surveys were largely incomplete. These totaled 261, leaving 4,546 respondents for analysis.

Had this been a random sample, the sample size would have yielded a 95 percent confidence level and a margin of error of plus-or-minus 1.45 percent. However, this sample is considered a convenience sample, making it impossible to compute a confidence level or margin of error.

As an example of a consequence of a convenience sample, certain “types” of respondents may respond in disproportionately high numbers. Samford researchers believe this was the case in the current sample when looking at the density of UAB respondents in the Birmingham metro area, which showed higher fandom for the Blazers than Auburn in metro Birmingham.

“These types of anomalies are what makes it impossible to say results are truly representative of the population as a whole,” said Clif Eason, assistant professor of marketing in Samford’s Brock School of Business and fllow in the Center for Sports Analytics. His students conducted the research.

The online survey also revealed other interesting notes about the Iron Bowl rivalry:

-- Love/hate: Not only did Samford’s survey measure how much a fan loves his or her favorite team, it also measured how much those fans hate their cross-state rival. Fans were asked to rate their love/hate for Alabama and Auburn on a scale of 0-to-10.

Fans of both schools “loved” their school at about 9.8 on the 10-point scale, but Auburn fans showed a little more hate for Alabama, rating Alabama 1.64 on the 0-to-10 Hate-Love scale compared to Alabama fans’ 1.91 rating of Auburn.

-- What about UAB?: How do UAB fans feel about the Crimson Tide and Tigers? On that 0-to-10 scale, UAB fans rated Alabama 3.31 and Auburn 5.35, indicating stronger animosity toward Bama.

-- Who’s a fan?: Auburn and UAB fans are more likely to have a direct connection to the school, such as attending the school or having a spouse or child attend. While 76.6% of Auburn fans and 87.6% of UAB fans have such a connection, only 50.6% of Alabama fans report this personal affiliation with their team.

Results of an online survey designed by students working with Samford University’s Center for Sports Analytics in the fall of 2019.Samford University

Samford researchers were most interested in Alabama vs. Auburn fandom in metro Birmingham and broke down the rivalry by zip code and hometown.

For instance, Alabama fans hold a 57-43 edge over Auburn fans in Hoover, according to the survey. In fact in more than 20 towns or neighborhoods in metro Birmingham, only three showed more Auburn fans and two others reflected a 50/50 split.

Here’s the breakdown: