As far as dinner conversation goes, religion and politics are typically topics meant to be avoided. And since football is religion in Alabama, that seems to put Tommy Tuberville firmly in the “don’t talk about” zone.

The former head football coach for the Auburn Tigers, who infamously mocked Alabama fans by frequently displaying on his fingers the number of consecutive wins the Tigers had over the Crimson Tide during his tenure there, is running for U.S. Senate.

He’s in the middle of a tight Republican primary, facing off against former U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, among others. In order to win the primary, Tuberville will need Alabama fans to look beyond football and vote for him.

But according to research from Samford University in Birmingham, he is facing an uphill battle.

Darin White, the chair of entrepreneurship, management, and marketing department in Samford’s Brock School of Business, and his students used a special tool to identify Alabama and Auburn fans in the state, and then determine how popular Tuberville is among each group.

They used a tool called the Affinio Platform to identify nearly 13,000 people in Alabama who are either Alabama or Auburn fans and are on Twitter. According to their research, about 71 percent of them cheered for the Crimson Tide, while 29 percent cheered for Auburn.

Among those groups, Tuberville is significantly more relevant among Auburn fans than Alabama fans.

Tuberville collected a Local Relevance score of 8.3 out of 100 among Auburn fans, compared to just 1.5 among Alabama fans. Meanwhile, Auburn fans are 36.8 times more likely to follow Tuberville on Twitter than the rest of the Alabama twitter population, while Alabama fans are only 5.9 times more likely to follow him. Tuberville has more than 28,000 Twitter followers.

Local Relevance is a score that aims to understand how much a certain person or brand - in this case, a politician/former football coach - resonates with a particular group of people. The Local Relevance score, in this case, compares Alabama and Auburn fans against everyone else in the state of Alabama.

Tuberville’s score of 8.3 among Auburn fans puts him on par with people like Stephen Colbert. For comparison, President Donald Trump has a Local Relevance score of 23 among Auburn fans.

For Alabama fans, Tuberville is about as relevant in Alabama as the Philladelphia Eagles, the San Antonio Spurs and Major League Soccer.

Do you have an idea for a data story about Alabama? Email Ramsey Archibald at rarchibald@al.com, and follow him on Twitter @RamseyArchibald. Read more Alabama data stories here.