re: Which team is more popular in Louisiana

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The Saints could not sell out Death Valley.

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are you fricking kidding me? Maybe there was something going on at the time that was bigger than football??

I know plenty of Saints season ticket holders who weren't even in the state of louisiana at that time because they lost their homes

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I know plenty of Saints season ticket holders who weren't even in the state of louisiana at that time because they lost their homes

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For a team so popular across the state, you would think there woulda been plenty enough fans to fill the seats from places besides New Orleans.

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LSU couldn't even fill up the Dome against Tulane

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LSU fills a 93,000 stadium, soon to be 100,000, while the Saints, the only pro team in the state, play in front of 73,000.

LSU is more popular and always has been.

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LSU is more popular and always has been.

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i haven't taken an opinion on that, but the statistics in this thread don't support that. Louisiana TV ratings for a regular season saints game outdraw even the biggest LSU games. Most LSU fans are saints fans and most saints fans are LSU fans.

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LSU fills a 93,000 stadium, soon to be 100,000, while the Saints, the only pro team in the state, play in front of 73,000.

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saints also have a pretty good waitlist (30,000+) and don't give 10,000+ seats to opposing fans with another 20,000 going to students...it also doesn't disprove the point i was making in my post.

When LSU played Tulane in the dome, it was empty. Tiger Stadium was empty in the 90's, etc. Bringing up the Saints in TS after Katrina is stupid

College game/experience offers so much more to the fans than nfl, that's just my opinion.

I went to Seattle couple years for Washington game. Idk how many other LSU fans went, but it was a ton.
Saints fans travel to away games in herds like that?
Not sure if pro football fans travel that way.
If the saints are so much more popular why not?

I'm not saying college is more popular than nfl in the us, it is in Louisiana and rest of sec country.
That's biggest indicator why LSU trumps Nola saints in Louisiana.

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When LSU played Tulane in the dome, it was empty.

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Almost 60,000 to see to see a away game in the Dome against a nothing Tulane team the week before the biggest home LSU game of the year is hardly a sign of anything negative and certainly far from an empty Dome.

All you have to do to get on a Saints wait list is send them an email. Most NFL teams charge to even get on a wait list.

I'll take a 100,000 seat stadium over a 30,000 no charge wait list every time as a show of popularity.

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Prior to Drew Brees, two of the state's bigger cities, Lake Charles and Shreveport, weren't even Saints towns and regularly showed Cowboys games. It's always been LSU.

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Thank you

I grew up in Baton Rouge and people for the most part didn't give a shite about the Saints. They were so bad my entire life until Brees (minus 1 ok year) that they were blacked out on TV in Baton Rouge.

Every kid my age (1988 birth) wore LSU gear and I RARELY saw or heard anything about the Saints in Baton Rouge until recently.


That said, WHO DAT and Geaux Tigers.

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TigerPhan27
Which team is more popular in Louisiana
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LSU, not even remotely close. Remember when the Saints played in a half empty Tiger Stadium? LSU would fill any stadium in Louisiana no matter who they played.


They didn't even fill their own stadium for most of the 90's

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I beg to differ. Even in the 1990's, a decade in which LSU was 54-58, we still finished in the nation's Top 10 in attendance every year.
We had big games and big name opponents even in our worst years of that decade - from 1990-94.

In the Dinardo era, LSU was probably closer to top 5 in attendance from 1995-1998. It fell off a little bit in '99.

Professional sports fans and college sports fans are different animals. City people tend to lean towards professional sports. Rural people tend to lean towards college sports.

First, take both teams home bases: New Orleans and its surrounds versus Baton Rouge and its surrounds. Both teams are more popular in their home areas by a long shot. Because Orleans/Jefferson/St Bernard/St Tammmany/St Charles/St John is larger than EBR/WBR/Livingston/Ascension, then the Saints start with a slight advantage.

Then, look at the rest of the state. Other than Shreveport, the rest of the state is more rural than urban. People in rural areas gravitate to college sports over professional sports, so give LSU an edge there.

In Shreveport, as an urban area, it tends to pro sports, but the Cowboys and Saints have the city split pretty evenly despite what fans of either team says. That split greatly diminishes the Saints presense there, LSU gets an advantage there too.

Looking at it that way, LSU is more popular in the state than the Saints. But here is what the Saints have that LSU doesn't. The Saints fan base extends into the Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida Gulf Coast. LSU's core fanbase ends at the state line.

There is another way to look at it. What team hold position #1 in a town's newspaper website for special sections?

Throw out NOLA.com and The Advocate. Look at how the other papers list teams:

Shreveport Times: Listed in this order: LSU/LA Tech/Outdoors/Golf/Saints/College Sports/High School Sports

Lafayette Advertiser: High School/UL/LSU/Saints

American Press (Lake Charles): McNeese/High School/LSU/Saints & NFL/National/Outdoor

News Star (Monroe): ULM/La Tech/Grambling/Sportsman's Paradise/High School/Motorsport

The Town Talk (Alexandria): No team sections listed

Houma Courier: High School/College/Saints Central/Basketball/Outdoors

LSU is listed higher than the Saints in every town's Newspaper website exept in Houma, where LSU is not specifically listed, or Monroe and Alexandria who do not list either team. That tells me that LSU is more popular in the state.