This is a project page dedicated to the information related to /r/CFB's 2016 National Championship Threads. The project aims to collect information regarding the comments and format them in ways for people to see interaction, post amount, and other information.

Analysis

Collecting Data

Data was collected via a python script (collect_comments.py) and all comment related data was placed into an sqlite database. Then, another python scrip (analyze.py) took the information and either printed out relevant info via Command Line or posted into an Excel document. Though the .xlsx file is not included in the repo, it can be easily recreated for your individual viewing by downloading the repo.

Analysis via Flair

One of the most interesting things about /r/CFB is the inclusion of flairs. Any user can request a representation of their collegiate team up to two teams to be displayed with every post of theirs (in the subreddit). This is a way to see what type of fans post in the thread. I looked at individuals with Alabama related flair, Clemson related flair, SEC Team or conference flair, and ACC Team or conference flair. The results were:

Alabama related flairs: 550

Clemson related flairs: 268

Alabama AND Clemson flairs: 4

SEC team / conference flairs: 1,298

ACC team / conference flairs: 762

Interesting enough, 4 individuals had an Alabama AND Clemson related flair for them, listed below.

It should be noted that all 4 had the order Alabama Crimson Tide / Clemson Tigers as compared to the other way around.

The Alabama fans pretty significantly outnumbered the Clemson fans. The Alabama and Clemson related flairs do NOT include the 3 individuals representing both, as I have placed those three in a different category. However, the SEC and ACC counts DO account for the 3. I've graphed the relationship of all P5 conference fans, isolating the Top 4 teams to their conference, below:

Analysis via Users and Comments

The comments themselves are also an interesting place to find discussion. In fact, there were 5,851 unique users who contributed 41,667 total comments. Of those 41,667 comments, only 336 have been deleted. The top 5 highest posters, though, were as follows:

/u/ephenssta posted 336 times

/u/BamaFan87 posted 279 times

/u/SometimesY posted 207 times

/u/DoctorHolliday posted 175 times

/u/ke5eaj posted 169 times

The rest of the users, as well as post count, are formatted in the spreadsheet run by analyze.py. Here, however, is a bar chart of how many users posted a certain amount of times. You're free to zoom in and observe the axes to see all data.

The graph is incredibly skewed to lower post counts by individual users.

Also interesting is the frequency of posts per minute, shown below.

Spikes in posts / minute tend to occur on every score as well as leading into the next quarter. The largest spike occured right after the Alabama Onside Kick.

NOTE: I'M LOOKING FOR AN ACTUAL TIME REPRESENTATION OF WHEN THE GAME OCCURED (COMMERCIAL BREAKS INCLUDED) SO THAT I CAN ACCURATELY ASSOCIATE THE SPIKES WITH GAME EVENTS. PLEASE EMAIL ME BELOW IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION OR SOURCE(S).

Comments and topic

I also decided to check for certain keywords in comments (swear-word warning ahead!). So, if a comment contained an instance or close relative to any of the keywords, it was counted. Here's the results

Comments related to Alabama: 3052

Comments related to Clemson: 3475

Comments saying a variant of "fuck": 2650

Comments saying a variant of "shit": 1475

Comments mentioning Derrick Henry: 594

Comments mentioning Deshaun Watson: 1077

Comments talking about a touchdown: 267

Comments with the word onside: 425

Requesting Feedback

This is me testing an analysis of data. If you have ideas on this information, such as how to format or other potentially interesting data, please send me an email at m.slighthouse@yahoo.com .