Social Scorecard: Who do fans see in CFP + dunk & NIL deal go viral

One of the most pivotal weekends in college football saw the College Football Playoff race begin to take shape. Defending champion Georgia dominated No. 1 ranked Tennessee to take control of the SEC East, while Alabama and Clemson suffered losses that very well could eliminate two of the near-constants of the CFP era.?

This opens up the field for the possibility of two Big Ten teams making the field, or a newcomer such as unbeaten TCU crashing the party or for the Pac-12 to potentially return to the four-team lineup for the first time since 2016.?Could even a two-loss team like LSU, with multiple top-10 wins, make the field?

There is still of course much football to be played, and probably several more twists and turns, but in this week’s edition of Social Scorecard, my colleague Matthew Barry and I explore fan sentiment around the CFP race.?

We do this by analyzing fan conversational data from the world of sports using the Talkwalker Consumer Intelligence platform. Powerful artificial intelligence analyzes fan conversation across social media, message boards, chat boards, news sites, podcasts and blogs to deliver insight into trends, themes, demographics, sentiment and more.

We’ll wrap things up this week by examining a unique NIL deal as well as a viral college basketball dunk that serves as a launching point into this week’s season openers. Can you believe it's basketball season already?

Let’s go.

Dawg Day Afternoon

After falling behind 3-0 to then-No. 1 Tennessee, Saturday’s SEC showdown was all Georgia, and the results and sentiment we tracked in real time show the Dawgs’ domination. In the first chart, we can see overall how much more active Georgia fans were in discussing the game on social media. The way the Georgia defense performed against UT’s previously unstoppable offense had a chilling effect on Vol Nation.

The Talkwalker real-time sentiment tracker shows a similar Dawg Domination. UT jumped to an early led but you can see in the chart here how the Bulldogs took control and never really gave Tennessee an opportunity to get back into the game. By postgame, all the talk was about the defending national champions now being in prime position to defend their title while also taking control in the SEC East.

• 3:30 - 3:45: Tennessee starts the game off with a key fumble recovery. Later on, that would lead to a 47 yard FG that puts Tennessee on the board first.
• 3:45 -? 4: Stetson Bennett responds with a 52 yard pass to Arian Smith and later a scramble into the endzone to give the Dawgs a 7-3 lead.
• 4 - 4:15: Georgia sends a 75-yard punt to pin the Vols at the 1-yard line.
• 4:15 - 4:30: Georgia pads their lead with a Ladd McConkey touchdown to go up 14-3.
• 4:30 - 4:45: At the end of the first quarter, Georgia leads 14-3 in the Vols red zone. To start the second quarter off, Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint leaps up for a great catch in the endzone to put the Dogs ahead 21-3.
• 4:45 - 5: Tennessee responds with a 36 yard FG to make the score 21-6.
• 5 - 5:15: Kelee Ringo gets a key interception to stop Tennessee in their tracks.?
• 5:15 - 5:30: Georgia closes out the half with another FG to go up 24-6 entering the second half.
• 5:45 - 6: Georgia’s defense shuts down Tennessee’s offense to start the half.
• 6 - 6:15: The Dogs reclaim another fumble from Tennessee and convert it into another FG to go up 27-6.
• 6:15 - 6:30: At the end of the third, it’s 27-6 Georgia.
• 6:45 - 7: Jalin Hyatt gets Tennessee their first TD of the day to bring the score to 24-13. Georgia would later recover an onside kick from Tennessee.
• 7 - 7:15: No. 3 Georgia takes down No. 1 Tennessee to reassert dominance in the SEC.

So how confident are Georgia fans now about making the CFP? We segmented out commenters who self-identified as Bulldogs fans through wording or hashtags in their bios. As you can see, they are feeling pretty doggone good. In this chart, there is a large consensus that Georgia will make the playoff, with the only spike saying that Georgia won’t make it came after ESPN College GameDay co-host Pat McAfee argued that if the Bulldogs lost the Tennessee game, they would be out.

So what about other contenders? For the sake of this exercise, we're going to assume Ohio State joins Georgia in the playoff as Big Ten champion -- Michigan will have something to say about that, of course -- and look at what fans think about Tennessee, Alabama, Clemson, TCU, USC and Michigan. And again, we're looking specifically here at what their own fans think, using Talkwalker's AI engine to track trends and sentiment by commenters who left self-identified markers in their public social bios.

Let's take a look.

Playoff confidence via conversation

Tennessee

Even after the loss to Georgia, Tennessee fans are feeling positive about their chances about making the playoffs. The Vol fans are still riding the high of beating Alabama in October and generally believe that UT will be the 2nd SEC team to make the playoff even without an appearance in the SEC title game.

Alabama

After the Tennessee loss, people’s belief in Alabama diminished significantly before LSU beat them this past weekend. If we were to pull this number a few days from now, we'd expect to see reality setting in with Tide fans that Alabama is out of the picture.

A look at these used in the conversation hints at the impact of the LSU loss. We can see references to LSU coach Brian Kelly, "Tide's chances" and "Alabama loses" taking prominence. Expect that to grow unless there are some wild upsets in the rankings in the coming weeks.

Clemson

People were debating whether Clemson was a legitimate competitor for the CFP, especially after narrow wins against Wake Forest and Syracuse, only to have those fears confirmed this past weekend when they lost to Notre Dame.

Wildcards

USC’s peak came just before they lost to Utah, but TCU has begun to build heavy steam over the last couple of weeks. We'll see what that looks like after they play Texas this week.

A ton of users are still predicting that USC could make the playoff if they win out but they also think TCU is going to miss out on the playoff due to the strength of their competitors ahead of them.

We'll continue to monitor this as the games continue.

Dunk you very much

Guard Eric Gaines is already known by diehard college basketball fans as a walking highlight reel, but he could launch himself into a new level of notoriety this season playing alongside another mid-major buzz-creator, Jordan “Jelly” Walker, at UAB. Walker certainly didn’t disappoint in UAB’s opening 111-70 win over Alabama State, scoring 38 points in only 28 minutes of action.

Gaines’ transfer from LSU to join Coach Andy Kennedy has made the Blazers an early favorite to be a potential bracket buster come March. Plays like this one from Gaines, in last week’s preseason rout of Mississippi College, give a glimpse as to why. Here are a couple of examples of how Talkwalker can be used to track the impact of such a play.

The original tweet by the UAB Men’s Basketball account has received more than 2 million views. The clip was featured on ESPN’s SportsCenter Top 10 and was discussed on blogs and social networks extensively. Check out the virality chart to see how it spread across the world:

We also were able to track the most frequent emojis used in conversation to describe Gaines' dunk/block combo. “Mind blown” is indeed a good one.

NIL Profile: Tommy Brown

In these early years of Name, Image & Likeness opportunities, there is a window for brands to score outsized return on investment through media coverage of creative or unique activations with collegiate athletes.

We featured one hot ad featuring Nebraska football DeColdest Crawford earlier this year. Now we have Colorado offensive lineman Tommy Brown, who partnered with Shinesty as an underwear model.

As a transfer from Alabama for this season, Brown arrived at CU with some NIL history but nothing quite as attention-grabbing as being "college football's first underwear supermodel." We used Talkwalker to explore how this activation might be a fit for both player and brand. We entered both the player's name and the brand's name into our AI engines to create comparative demographic profiles based on conversational audience data.

As you can see, there is significant alignment!

In terms of shared interests, we can see that the breakdowns between people who talked about Shinesty and people who talked about Brown were strikingly similar. Sports was the largest overlap but others of note included Family & Parenting, Colleges & Universities and Food & Drinks.

We can see similar alignment in careers, with Author/Writer, Executive Manager and Trainer/Coach leading the way for both player and brand.

Ages are similar. Both Shinesty and Brown score big among the age bracket of 25-34.

The conversational audience for both -- keep in mind this is not just the brand social followers but the much larger pool of people discussing brand or player who are NOT followers -- tracks heavily male. That's perfect to pair on an underwear ad for men.

By tapping into the conversation, we can see common themes. It's a good thing for this activation that we see people who are discussing this deal specifically. Would the brand be getting that kind of talk about an add featuring an unknown model? I wouldn't think so. The data suggests this was an excellent partnership, at least in terms of getting attention with desired demographics.

The deal was first announced by sports business reporter Mark J. Burns in a tweet. Here we can see the virality of that post.

We then looked at unique conversations in the Boulder, Colo., area, where would good see a strong split between mentions of Brown and mentions of the brand. This should be very exciting for the brand: When people are talking about Brown, they are talking specifically about his NIL deal and mentioning Shinesty. This is absolutely a win-win for both.

If you like this kind of content, please consider subscribing to our Social Scorecard newsletter. And if you'd like to learn more about how Talkwalker can be utilized to gain real-time conversational insights that lead to action and impact for your program, contact Tim Stephens at [email protected].

Also, in case you missed it, check out our Social Media Trends to Watch for 2023.