For a good part of America, college football owns Saturdays in the fall. So as we have done with other leadership groups, we decided to take a look at how engaged college football coaches at the Big Five conference programs are on social.
Our colleague Tanner Simkins of the Complete SET Agency did the digging, and the results were both surprising and interesting as it looks like those leaders patrolling the Saturday sidelines are the MOST ENGAGED, especially on Twitter, than any other set of coaches in any other sport, college or professional. Social and college football seem to rule the day.
Some of the numbers we found:
Of the 66 (adding in Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly with 187k), 55 were active on Twitter in some way, and all of the 54 have either actively posted original content or have retweeted team or school related content in the past two weeks.
Leading the way was Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh and his 2 million followers which has DROPPED from 2.1 last year (and he is much less active this year than in years past), while Kansas’ Les Miles is not just leading the Jayhawks back to the top 25, he is engaged with fans with over 330 k followers. The rest in the top five, all at over 200k, are South Carolina’s Will Muschamp (279), Georgia’s Kirby Smart (283), Penn State’s James Franklin at 237k and Auburn’s Gus Malzahn (229k).
Last years top two and three, Ohio State’s Urban Meyer 1.9 million and Miami’s Mark Richt at just shy of 500k have left the list, but no less than 25 coaches have solid followings of over 100,000, an audience that is both robust and ripe for activation.
The average number of followers is still much larger than any other group of coaches, easily in the 50 to 60 k range.
On Instagram the engagement is much less, but still 18 have active accounts, much more than any other group of coaches, owners of GM’s in sport in North America.
So who is not active on social? One that surprised was Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, given all the commitment the Tigers have put into social overall.
Others maybe not so surprisingly are Alabama’s Nick Saban and UCLA’s Chip Kelly, but for the most part this is a pretty interested and engaged group.
Now are coaches posting themselves?
Probably not, and definitely not all the time, and a good amount of the posts and retweets are pretty benign or revolve around recruiting or game day rituals. Maybe it’s because of staff size that college football coaches are using social more, maybe it’s a case of follow the leader, maybe it’s a concerted push, but if you are a fan, a brand, or a platform looking to find engagement, look to college football coaches, who are setting a surprising standard for others to follow.
