The College Football Playoff semifinals begin Saturday afternoon as Alabama and Washington face off in the Peach Bowl while Ohio State and Clemson will battle it out in the Fiesta Bowl. While the winner on the gridiron has yet to be determined, the top teams on Twitter and Facebook, in terms of numbers, isn’t much of a fight.
In the weeks leading up to the Playoff, from Nov. 23 to Dec. 23, Ohio State received more than 450,000 Twitter mentions between its #GoBucks hashtag and @OhioStateFB team account, according to social media publishing and analytics company SocialFlow.
Coming in at No. 2 for the same time period was Alabama at nearly 310,000 mentions of its team account and #RollTide, with the latter carrying the weight of Twitter mentions at close to 200,000. Clemson rounded out the top 3 with close to 200,000 Twitter mentions between #Clemson and @ClemsonFB.
That feeling when you’re off for the holiday break after 3 weeks of grinding
pic.twitter.com/33K9eB54gF
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) December 21, 2016
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On Facebook, where Ohio State leads the “Likes” count when examining just its athletics page, the Buckeyes also came in at No. 1 in terms of level of engagement. This past week, more than 80,000 people were talking and sharing content about Ohio State on the social platform while almost 170,000 separate engagements happened with the athletic department Facebook account.
Again trailing behind was Alabama as roughly 28,000 people shared content and talked about the Tide on Facebook, with less than half of the engagement level as Alabama (~ 70,000).
Below is a graphic from SocialFlow of Facebook ‘Likes’ and Twitter followers for each school as of Dec. 28.
