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Are the Dallas Cowboys REALLY “America’s Team”? Maybe not so much

Everybody says that the Dallas Cowboys are “America’s Team”.

But are they? Are they really that?

Maybe it’s time to really find out, scientifically, once and for all. And to do that, we have to turn to the Internet for an answer:

NFL Logo Map Custom Cotton 20*36 King Size Pillowcase
NFL Logo Map Custom Cotton 20*36 King Size Pillowcase

Because ACCORDING TO THIS INTERACTIVE TWITTER MAP, the Dallas Cowboys definitely are NOT “America’s Team”.

So who is?

Would you believe the DENVER BRONCOS are really “America’s Team”?  You’d believe us if you took a look at that map – ’cause according to our eyeballs, there’s a whole lot more Denver Bronco orange on that map than there is Dallas Cowboy Blue.

We could be wrong – but it sure looks like that’s the case to us.  Oh yes, Dallas is definitely a contender here… but it’s a far cry from being the primary team that the nation turns to on a regular basis over all others.

So what’s the deal? How did this map get generated?

It’s all thanks to Twitter’s analysis of geo-tagged tweets that happen to mention a particular team. Twitter was able to take that geocoding and apply it to a county-by-county map to identify where a team’s tweets — assumed to be from fans of that team — were coming from.  After compiling the data, we’re left with this pretty cool interactive map.

There are some weird outliers, of course, but a lot of that has to do with the proliferation of fantasy football, rabid college fans following their favorite players in the pros, or even the slim possibility that there’s only one person in a particular county who is geotagging all their tweets about their favorite team (skewing that county’s statistics away from what one would assume to be the local favorite).

So sift through the regional football follower data.  Are there any locations that surprise you?  We saw some odd placement of Detroit Lions fans way way outside of Michigan. What have you found in your view that you’d want to point out?  Tell us in the comments below…