According to a new study, the worst American city for football fans is St. George — sort of.
The southern Utah city is 245th, and last, according to the study by personal finance website WalletHub.com, but it does not include every city in the United States. It compares 245 cities with at least one college or professional football team.
St. George is home to Dixie State University, soon to be Utah Tech University. The Trailblazers play FCS football.
No Utah city does particularly well in the study, but that’s in no small part because none of them has an NFL team. And the study was heavily skewed toward professional football — 75% NFL and 25% college football.
Pittsburgh is No. 1, and the only city in the top 30 that isn’t home to an NFL team is No 28 Tuscaloosa, Alabama — home of the Alabama Crimson Tide. Six Utah cities trail far behind:
No. 45 • Provo.
No. 81 • Ogden.
No. 165 • Logan.
No. 166 • Salt Lake City.
No. 203 • Cedar City.
No. 245 • St. George.
Among midsize cities (population 100,000-300,000) Provo — home to the Brigham Young University Cougars — is No. 9, and Salt Lake City, home to the University of Utah Utes, is No. 33.
Among small cities (population less than 100,000), Ogden (Weber State Wildcats) is No. 37, Logan (Utah State Aggies) is No. 96, Cedar City (Southern Utah Thunderbirds) is No. 116, and St. George is last at No. 137.
A more interesting comparison for Utahns is the ranking of its cities for college football fans:
No. 18 • Provo.
No. 58 • Ogden.
No. 146 • Logan.
No. 147 • Salt Lake City.
No. 203 • Cedar City.
No. 235 • St. George.
If it seems weird that Provo (home of BYU) is so far ahead and that Ogden (home to Weber State) and Logan (Utah State) are both ranked higher than Salt Lake City (University of Utah) — and it absolutely does seem odd — the metrics in the study include ticket prices. And tickets to Ute games are more expensive.
The study’s metrics also include the number of wins over the past three seasons, the number of championships, the number of hall of fame head coaches, fan engagement (Twitter followers and Facebook likes per capita), number of coaches in the past 10 seasons and stadium capacity per capita.