Study finds Eagles fans among most stable in the NFL

One of the long running themes we here at BGN have talked about has been the stereotype of Eagles fans propagated by the national media. We're supposed to be ravenous, ill-behaved, irrational neanderthals who of course threw snowballs at Santa Clause (45 years ago now!). We've known that reality of what we are is far different for some time now, but we've finally got some empirical proof to back it up. In measuring social media after NFL games last season, Emory University researchers found that the Eagles were the 3rd most "stable" fanbase in the NFL.

The researches measured the ratio of positive to negative tweets in the 3 days following games last season and found that the Raiders, Patriots & Steelers fanbases were the most volatile and unstable in the NFL last season.

As they point out however, the relative tranquility of Eagles fans last season may have been largely due to falling expectations as the season wore on.

"My gut tells me that their expectations changed after the first few games," Tripathi said. "They started caring about the next season more than what's happening right now."

It's certainly true that it's harder to get really upset at games you were likely to lose anyway. Unless you're a Raiders fan evidently.

Here's the full ranking in a graphic from the Wall Street Journal.