OLS results (with standard errors).

College Football carries a strong social, cultural, and economic importance in the United States with teams, universities, the public and others leveraging social media and the online sphere to promote and discuss events and happenings. In our study, we quantify the mentions and underlying public sentiment of online posts related to American College Football originating in the 2019–2023 seasons on social and news media in the United States. We complement this with an analysis of how team performance clustered into conference levels relates to social media data using ordinary least squares. We find the impact of the 2020 season, which had pandemic-induced schedule adjustments, was felt across the sports landscape, but impacted different conferences in diverse ways. We further observe that public sentiment during the season tends to be higher in Power Five conferences that have a lower winning percentage. Additionally, our results suggest that the COVID season corresponds to decreased mentions. The effect on sentiment is less clear, but we more generally find that the winning percentage (positively) predicts sentiment.

大学橄榄球（College Football）在美国拥有举足轻重的社会、文化与经济影响力，各参赛队伍、高校、公众及相关主体均借助社交媒体与在线平台推广赛事、讨论相关动态。本研究针对2019至2023赛季美国大学橄榄球相关的美国社交媒体与新闻媒体在线帖文，量化其提及量与隐含的公众情绪。本研究同时采用普通最小二乘法（ordinary least squares），分析按联盟层级分组的球队表现与社交媒体数据之间的关联，以补充前述研究。研究发现，2020赛季受疫情影响调整赛程，其影响遍及整个体育领域，但对不同联盟的冲击存在显著差异。我们进一步观察到，在胜率偏低的Power Five联盟（Power Five conferences）中，赛事期间的公众情绪往往更为积极。此外，研究结果显示，新冠疫情赛季的相关帖文提及量有所下降。疫情对公众情绪的影响尚不明确，但整体而言，球队胜率可正向预测公众情绪。