Forget cheering in the stands. If you really want to get a hold on a football team's fandom's true feelings you might be better off checking their Facebook posts. In fact, Facebook has done just that. They tracked fans (identified as people who liked a team's official page on Facebook) sentiment about their teams throughout the season by analyzing the amount of positive and negative words in team-related posts.
For Dolphins fans this was a roller coaster of a season.
For most teams their sentiment jives pretty well with how the team is doing on the field, but this Fins season will be remember more for locker room problems as much as for actual games. So we've gone ahead and edited in the date "Incognito-gate" hit the headlines as well as Jeff Ireland's post-season departure.
A couple of notes
- Fins fans went into the season really excited. Like, really, really excited. Certainly more so than any other team in the AFC East.
- That, of course, leveled off during that first four-game losing streak.
- It appears Icnogntio-gate gave fans a boost at first, as they possibly rallied around the team, but that sentiment soon settled into the most negative sentiment fans had about the team all season.
- That dramatic win over San Diego certainly gave fans a much needed boost.
- Unsurprisingly, fans did seem pretty happy once general manager Jeff Ireland left the team.
To read more about the data and find graphs for all 32 teams, check out the original Facebook post.
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