Admittedly, that’s a rough headline. But it beats, “didn’t these guys see ‘Silver Linings Playbook’?” Philly.com’s Peter Mucha reports there’s a couple of academics trying to determine the emotional stability of respective NFL fan bases using that most reliable barometer of them all, Twitter.
“We used Twitter data to describe fan base reactions to team wins and losses during the sixteen-game 2012 NFL regular season,” according to Emory University researchers Mike Lewis and Manish Tripathi, who measured fan happiness, sadness and stability.
Happiest after a win: New Orleans Saints fans. Saddest after a loss: Pittsburgh Steelers fans. Fewest mood swings: Dallas Cowboys fans.
You might think Eagles fans would be among the league’s saddest last season, given the lousy 4-12 record. Then again, maybe that was counteracted by happiness after some losses — as in “Woo hoo! We’ll finally get rid of head coach Andy Reid!”
That’s one idea to explain how Eagles fans wound up as the third most stable, after Cowboys and Indianopolis Colts fans. Emory, more or less, had a similar conclusion: “A better moniker for these fans in 2012 might be ‘resigned.’ It seems that as Philly began to lose more games, fans started to look forward to the next season, and a new head coach. A majority of the fan tweets after a game were about changes for the next season, and not about the most recent loss.”