Which college football team owns Central Florida?

Ask just about anyone familiar with Central Florida, and they will tell you this is college football territory. The Orlando Magic documentary This Magic Moment noted how plenty were skeptical a basketball team could succeed in Central Florida because this was a college football town.

Things have changed since then. But it is still largely a college football town in many, many ways. Saturdays are full of college football shirts. The city hosts three bowl games. It has the Camping World Kickoff Game starting off on Labor Day. And Florida State brought its spring game to town in April.

This is the nexus for three big college football programs too with Florida, Florida State and Miami all staking some claim to the state and UCF somewhere off on the periphery too.

So what does college football fandom look like in the Orlando area?

Reddit took a poll of college football fans on its college football subreddit to create a county-by-county look at college football fandom. It would appear in looking at this map, Orange County and Central Florida are some sort of mix of Florida and UCF fans. It is easy to see why Florida State wanted to try to plant a more secure flag:

This raises another interesting question. Exactly how is the support in Orlando and Orange County for the more notable teams in the area.

In addition to the overall map above, Reddit also created team heat maps, showing where the majority of team votes came from for each individual county. Here we can also learn some interesting things about Central Florida fandom in college football.

First a look at UCF.

As expected, the fandom is very much located in Orange County and the surrounding counties. There is only a corner of Knights fans out there:

There are not many UCF fans outside Orlando and really outside the Central Florida area. The national map shows there are pockets in Central Florida where the Knights are the most popular team. They are making some ground. But it is barely a dent to the national brands.

Their maps show exactly that.

So the full-country map shows the Florida Gators are probably the most popular team in Central Florida. And there certainly is a high concentration of Gators fans in the Central Florida area as shown in their heat map:

As expected, Alachua County and North Central Florida has the highest concentration of Gators fans and it radiates out from there. Thus Central Florida is firmly in its orbit.

It is interesting to note how national the Gators’ reach is though. Florida fandom seems to spread into the Northeast especially. And the national map shows some surprising pockets where Florida was voted the most popular team.

It is certainly unclear whether it is more than Florida State or how close that national map is. Looking at the Seminoles’ heat map, it would seem the base for Florida State’s fan base is Central Florida:

That is a very dark red for the Florida State section coming across Central Florida. So Florida State was right to make some investment in the Orlando area. They will do so again when the play Ole Miss at Camping World Stadium on Labor Day.

And while the other two schools seem to have a firm grip on their presence in Central Florida, Miami’s map looks very different. The Hurricanes heat map looks much more national than the Florida or Florida State map while still maintaining a strong Florida presence.

Although not in Orange County.

Other notable trends in Orange County include a surprisingly strong base of support for Clemson, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Stanford, Purdue, Duke, Mississippi State, Virginia and Syracuse.

Orlando definitely has a varied fan base when it comes to college football. And while these polls may not be the most scientific polls out there, it does give a good snapshot of the fan base in the Orlando area.