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Sixteen Fans Are Beating Your Whole Fanbase

RallyFuel Team • July 27, 2026 • 8 min read

Four RallyFuel leaderboards, one key finding: size does not win here

By the RallyFuel Team

Table of Contents

There are four ways to rank college sports on RallyFuel. Fan Power, verified NIL dollars, individual fans, and conferences.

They produce four different lists. But read them together and the same finding turns up on every one.

The biggest fanbases are not winning. The most consistent ones are.

West Virginia is second in Fan Power with 16 fans. Pittsburgh leads all 1,191 schools in verified NIL money with 19. A single fan in Morgantown accounts for $350 of his school’s $400. And sixteen volleyball players in the Midwest are better supported than most of the SEC.

None of that is possible on a leaderboard that measures size. It is entirely possible on one that measures whether you showed up.

Board one: Fan Power, or who is loud

Live rankings: rallyfuel.com/schools

Ohio State · 549 Fan Power · 424 Fire Ups · 119 fans 2. West Virginia · 441 · 406 · 16 fans 3. LSU · 313 · 268 · 42 fans 4. Vanderbilt · 269 · 222 · 20 fans 5. Miami · 165 · 50 · 55 fans 6. Indiana · 162 · 75 · 82 fans 7. Nebraska · 155 · 140 · 10 fans 8. Florida · 152 · 86 · 56 fans 9. TCU · 145 · 131 · 10 fans 10. UC Davis · 137 · 130 · 2 fans

Ohio State leads, and earned it. 424 Fire Ups from 119 fans is the deepest active fanbase on the platform.

But the Buckeyes needed roughly seven times the crowd to stay 108 points ahead of a Mountaineer group small enough to fit around one tailgate table. And two spots outside the top eight, Nebraska and TCU are running ten fans each, producing fourteen and thirteen Fire Ups per person.

Then there is UC Davis at tenth with two fans. The only FCS program in the top twelve, ranked above Notre Dame and Florida State, on 130 Fire Ups from two people who apparently do not sleep. That is 65 each, the highest rate on the platform by a distance nobody else is close to.

Now look at the same board from the other side.

Indiana: 82 fans, 75 Fire Ups. Second most fans anywhere, sitting sixth.
Miami: 55 fans, 50 Fire Ups. Under one Fire Up per fan.
Florida: 56 fans, 86 Fire Ups.

These are not small fanbases. They are quiet ones. Indiana has more registered fans than LSU, Vanderbilt, Nebraska, TCU, and UC Davis, and finishes behind all but one of them, because showing up once and showing up daily are different things.

Board two: verified NIL, or who actually paid

Live rankings: rallyfuel.com/leaderboard/schools

Here the list reorders completely, because this one counts money that reached an athlete.

Pittsburgh · ACC · $700 · 19 fans · $36.84 per fan 2. Indiana · Big Ten · $470 · 82 fans · $5.73 3. West Virginia · Big 12 · $400 · 16 fans · $25.00 4. Ohio State · Big Ten · $175 · 119 fans · $1.47 5. Oklahoma · SEC · $125 · 16 fans · $7.81 6. Michigan · Big Ten · $125 · 31 fans · $4.03 7. Washington State · Pac 12 · $125 · 8 fans · $15.63 8. Coastal Carolina · Sun Belt · $125 · 5 fans · $25.00 9. Louisville · ACC · $100 · 21 fans · $4.76 10. Arkansas · SEC · $100 · 9 fans · $11.11

Ohio State is first in noise and fourth in dollars. Pittsburgh does not appear in the Fan Power top twelve at all, and leads this board outright.

The last column is the story. Pitt’s fans average nearly $37 each. West Virginia’s average $25. Coastal Carolina, five fans in the Sun Belt, also averages $25, which puts a school most of college football never thinks about on the same footing as a Big 12 program.

Ohio State averages $1.47.

That is not an insult. It is what happens when a fanbase is enormous and its habit is cheering rather than backing. The gap between showing up and contributing now has a number attached, and the Buckeyes lead one board and sit fourth on the one that pays tuition.

131 championships, $425

Set the championship counts next to the money.

Michigan has 48 titles and $125. Oklahoma has 47 and $125. Ohio State has 36 and $175.

Three of the most decorated programs in American history, 131 championships between them, combined for $425.

Pittsburgh has five championships and $700 by itself.

Banner count is history. NIL is present tense. Nothing won in 1948 puts money in a current athlete’s pocket, and the fans who understand that are the ones running this board. Washington State has eight fans still writing checks after the Pac 12 was taken apart around them. Arkansas has nine at eleven dollars a head.

Board three: individual fans, or why points are not dollars

Live rankings: rallyfuel.com/leaderboard/fans

ddnp43 · West Virginia · $350 · 11,845 points · 6 day streak 2. fan-yellow-398 · Indiana · $215 · 4,340 points 3. Douglas Burke · Georgia · $150 · 12,220 points 4. fan-aqua-829 · Indiana · $150 · 3,000 points 5. fan-teal-252 · Oklahoma · $100 · 104,000 points 6. fan-green-167 · Louisville · $100 · 2,000 points 7. fan-azure-913 · Washington State · $100 · 2,000 points 8. fan-tan-989 · Michigan · $100 · 2,000 points 9. fan-aquamarine-892 · NC State · $100 · 2,000 points

Look at ranks 2 and 3. One fan put in $215 and holds 4,340 points. The other put in $150, sixty five dollars less, and holds 12,220.

Run the bottom of the list and the reason appears. Louisville, Washington State, Michigan, NC State: all $100, all exactly 2,000 points. Twenty points per dollar is the floor. That is what fueling alone gets you.

Everyone above the floor earned it.

fan-yellow-398: 20 per dollar. Baseline.
fan-aqua-829: 20 per dollar. Baseline.
ddnp43: roughly 34 per dollar.
Douglas Burke: roughly 81 per dollar.

Burke fueled the identical $150 as the fan one spot below him and finished with four times the points. Same dollars, different behavior. The gap is streaks, posts, comments, Fire Ups, and it compounds fast enough that a $150 fan who shows up daily buries a $150 fan who logged in once.

One fan on this board has a streak

One.

ddnp43 sits at six consecutive days. Everyone else is at zero. And ddnp43 holds first place.

That is the most exploitable fact on the platform. The single strongest differentiator available is currently being used by one person out of nine, and it costs nothing but returning tomorrow.

It also explains a number from board two. ddnp43 accounts for $350 of West Virginia’s $400. One person, running a daily habit, has carried a Big 12 program into the national top three in verified NIL and the top two in Fan Power, with sixteen fans behind him.

Board four: conferences, or who college sports forgets

Live rankings: rallyfuel.com/schools/conferences

There are 126,094 athletes across 1,191 schools and 153 conferences here.

The Big Ten leads with 473 fans. It also carries 8,018 athletes. One fan for every seventeen athletes.

Rank the top conferences by coverage instead of totals and the power leagues fall through the floor.

MIVA: 7.56 fans per athlete
WCHA: 2.91
MPSF: 0.62
ASUN: 0.069
CUSA: 0.068
Big 12: 0.061
Big Ten: 0.059
SEC: 0.053
ACC: 0.039
Sun Belt: 0.033

MIVA is men’s volleyball, the oldest such league in the country, founded in 1961. Sixteen athletes listed on the platform, 121 fans, ninth in the national rankings. Every other conference is measured in fans per hundred athletes. MIVA is measured the other way around. The WCHA is eighth with 54 hockey players and 157 fans, and both rank above conferences fielding thousands.

Second place belongs to MPSF, a conference most fans could not pick out of a lineup: 63 member schools, 661 athletes, built entirely out of artistic swimming, beach volleyball, and Olympic sports the football leagues do not administer. It has 407 fans. It is beating the SEC.

And the ACC has more athletes than anyone at 8,117, ranks fifth in total fans, and finishes near the bottom in coverage.

The affiliate tell

Several conferences carry a second, smaller school count. Those are affiliates: schools that belong in one sport only, a bowling or beach volleyball or wrestling program with nowhere else to compete.

CUSA: 12 full members, 14 affiliates
ASUN: 12 full members, 9 affiliates
Sun Belt: 14 full members, 7 affiliates
Big Ten: 18 full members, 2 affiliates
SEC: 16 full members, 1 affiliate

Conference USA administers more schools it does not fully own than schools it does. Its only NCAA team titles have come in bowling, one of them won by an affiliate rather than a full member.

The conferences hosting the most affiliates are the ones taking in athletes nobody else would administer, in sports with no television inventory. Those are precisely the athletes at the top of the coverage table.

What four boards add up to

The power conferences have scale. Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, and ACC hold more than 29,000 athletes between them and about 1,500 fans. Huge rosters, thin coverage, support pooled around a handful of names.

The small conferences have density. MIVA, WCHA, and MPSF hold about 730 listed athletes and 685 fans. Nearly one to one.

Neither is wrong. But the athlete who gains most from fan funding is not the one who was already getting a deal. It is the volleyball player, the hockey goalie, the swimmer at a school with no broadcast window. Across all four boards, those are the athletes being found.

There are 126,094 athletes here and a few thousand fans. The room left is not a rounding error. It is the entire field.

And the bar to enter the national top ten in verified NIL is currently one hundred dollars.