Facebook data shows football fan statistics across the US

Facebook has a lot of data about us, but that's not necessarily their fault. It's more our faults since we willingly post all sorts of information to our profiles. However, in Facebook's most recent data collection case study, they showed off various regions in the US and what football team had the most fans in a particular region of the country. The results are quite impressive.

Facebook based their findings on the "likes" of football teams, and approximately 35 million Facebook users have "liked" at least one of the 32 NFL teams. With that, they put together a heat map of sorts to show off all of the loyal football fans in the country. Obviously, it looks fairly typical, with most Facebook users liking the team associated with the state they live in.

However, some portions of the map are rather interesting to look at. Deadspin went in-depth to analyze some of the more interesting fan pockets throughout the US. For instance, you'll notice that there are quite a few Dallas Cowboy fans in the south and along the lower East coast, mostly since many of the southern NFL teams didn't arrive until later on in the league, and the Washington Redskins weren't very liked at the time.

Another interesting statistic is that Hawaii is a big Pittsburgh Steelers state, mostly since Troy Polamalu, one of the league's top defenders, is of Pacific Islander descent. The Pittsburgh Steelers also take up most of Ohio, which is quite interesting considering that Ohio has the Cleveland Browns. While Ohio borders Pennsylvania and is only a short drive from Pittsburgh, we're frankly not surprised that the Browns aren't getting much love.