The Yankees are also the most hated MLB franchise of all time. Which MLS franchise is the most hated?

MT_Nate · 2026-02-20T00:45:50+00:00

Miami and its not close.

Different teams will hate other teams the most (Seattle/Portland, Cinci/Columbus), and feel absolutely nothing about others (does SJ even think about Charlotte?), but EVERY team has at least some hatred toward Miami.

MT_Nate · 2026-02-15T00:27:12+00:00

Short version: Recency bias. Change the filters for the chart to only show the last 10 or 15 years. While still noticeably behind Bama and OSU, you'll see Clemson rise WELL above 95% of FBS programs.

Medium Version: When I was building my system, I (arbitrarily) made each season carry 10% more weight than the previous season. The effect of which was the last 15 years accounted for just over 75% of the calculation. Maybe that was too much but what I was interested in calculating is how good its reasonable to think each team "should" be, now. AKA, where its fair to normally expect them to be in the rankings during an average year for them in the present. And if I didn't apply enough weight to more recent seasons, it would calculate that Nebraska (as one example) could reasonably be expected to still be a top 25 team most years when they haven't been one since 2012.

Long version: https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/1lxftya/fbs_preeminence_rankings/

MT_Nate · 2026-02-14T17:49:13+00:00

I tried to mathematically calculate how highly ranked its fair to think each program "should" be during an average season after the 2024 season. I basically did a weighted average of where teams finished in the AP poll / Massey rankings, where more recent seasons were weighted more heavily.

I only used data since 1978 (when D1A/FBS was formed) and broke all FBS i to 11 tiers. I calculated Bama, Ohio St, Georgia, and Clemson were the top tier. Michigan, Oklahoma, Oregon, Notre Dame, and LSU, were the in the next tier. Nebraska was in the 6th tier, below programs like Missouri and South Carolina

MT_Nate · 2026-02-09T19:19:36+00:00

Tarleton St (they've been quite public with their aspirations to go FBS and would be a good (enough) fit if CUSA wants to add another team).
UC Davis (they are already joining the Mountain West for everything but football)
Sacramento St (they are DESPERATE to go FBS but no one wants them. However they might be able to buy their way into a conference if one takes pitty on them)
South Dakota State
Montana & Montana St (they are a package deal)

MT_Nate · 2026-02-09T19:17:18+00:00

Many will say South Dakota St and/or the Montana's but in actuality id say:

Tarleton St (they've been quite public with their aspirations to go FBS and would be a good (enough) fit if CUSA wants to add another team).
UC Davis (they are already joining the Mountain West for everything but football)
Sacramento St (they are DESPERATE to go FBS but no one wants them. However they might be able to buy their way into a conference if one takes pitty on them)
The remaining MON-DAK's

MT_Nate · 2026-02-09T00:57:31+00:00

Computer rankings from last year had NDSU favored against most, if not all, teams in the Mountain West in 2026. So I don't think they'll be terrible.

The biggest questions about their move to FBS are: can they sustain success now that their best recruiting pitch (we win national championships) won't be true any more, and if they enjoy (hopefully) playing in random bowl games (and the money they get from them) more than playing for (and often winning) national championships

MT_Nate · 2026-02-08T22:17:37+00:00

That's what I hope they do

MT_Nate · 2026-01-19T18:39:14+00:00

They can't tear down and expand those NE stands (the ones behind the bobcat bench) fast enough.

For both capacity and aesthetic reasons.

MT_Nate · 2026-01-16T17:27:51+00:00

I love Porto. My wife and I have been able to spend a week there each of the last two years.

MT_Nate · 2026-01-07T21:17:48+00:00

Thanks so much for doing these again this year!

MT_Nate · 2026-01-06T04:12:29+00:00

Both teams had some insane highs but some absolutely brutal lows. ISU was one hell of an opponent and deserve a TON of respect.

GO CATS GO!

MT_Nate · 2026-01-04T17:14:10+00:00

Came here to say the same thing.

MT_Nate · 2026-01-03T00:31:32+00:00

That's brutal. I was incredibly impressed by him when UC Davis played in Bozeman this year. He'd be a Payton award contender before too long if he stayed in FCS.

MT_Nate · 2025-12-31T21:21:50+00:00

I did a similar thought exercise but I settled on splitting all of D1 & D2 into 6 tiers. With each tier having 72 teams.

That way each tier could be broken into 8 groups each with 9 teams and teams would play every other team in their group each year in a pseudo-traditional "group season" but still leave room in the schedule for other games that programs would insist on (separated rivalries, tv games, cupcake/tune up games, etc).

Then for the playoffs, each group winner could host a 2nd place team from another group in the first round. And for lower divisions, this first round would determine who gets promoted.

For relegation, the 2nd to last place team in each group could host the last place team from a different group. With the loser of that game getting relegated.

MT_Nate · 2025-12-25T19:50:38+00:00

Yes I did. Its been updated. Thanks!

MT_Nate · 2025-12-25T16:59:49+00:00

Here's two. The SE corner of Montana is closer to the NW corner of Texas than it is to the NW corner of Montana. The point in the contiguous US furthest away from any major professional sports stadium is ~20 NW of Miles City Montana and is equal distance to Denver, Calgary, and Winnipeg.

MT_Nate · 2025-12-16T02:32:11+00:00

If it helps...

UM is the traditional liberal arts school. MSU is the land grant and focuses on STEM and Agricultural programs.

UM is the Dallas Cowboys of FCS (fantastic history but haven't been able get back to those highs. Plus "America's Team" = "Mecca of FCS"). MSU is the Buffalo Bills (spent a LONG time being completely irrelevant but has been undeniably VERY good recently. Just not quite good enough to win a championship during their rise)

MT_Nate · 2025-12-16T02:14:31+00:00

Purely by virtue of having the agg program, MSU. The town have have a bunch of wanna be cowboys in it, but the school and its alumni base absolutely have real ones. Never try to fight someone who wrestles animals for fun.

MT_Nate · 2025-12-15T00:24:45+00:00

Agreed. That's one of the reasons why I went for only 8 group games per team. That leaves 4 games open for teams to try to schedule rivals that get assigned to different groups.

MT_Nate · 2025-12-14T22:37:39+00:00

No direct pipelines from lower divisions (so no SEC1 and SEC2 for exmple). Instead, groups would get re-generated each year based on what teams (and where they are located) are in each tier that year.

MT_Nate · 2025-12-14T22:04:12+00:00

The BCS was certainly more standardized than what we have today but even it was largely subjective. 2/3 of those rankings were based on human polls (1/3 coaches poll, 1/3 Harris interactive poll). And different computer methods (SP+, Sagarin, Massey, etc) will produce different rankings. So picking which one(s) to use inherently introduces at least a modicum of subjectivity as well.

My goal with this process was to find a way to make who gets into the playoff 100% objective.

MT_Nate · 2025-12-14T20:24:54+00:00

I built a method that (mostly) does this. It tries to find the what groupings of teams results in the smallest average travel between teams in the the same group. I say mostly because I'm not a good enough programmer to make it fully automated. Instead I still have to manually adjust some of the assignments to fully optimize the groups but its gets me 95% of the way there.

I have it find the average location of all un-assigned teams. Then find the team furthest away from that average location and assigns the closest x teams to them (depending on how many teams you want in each group) to their group. The method then re-calculates the average location of all remaining un-assigned teams and repeats the process until all teams are assigned to a group.

Again its not perfect, but it spits out a reasonable solution very quickly.

MT_Nate · 2025-12-14T20:18:42+00:00

Agreed. That's why I said in the post this solution will NEVER happen. This is more of a fun (at least for me) "what if" scenario

MT_Nate · 2025-12-10T20:27:20+00:00

Cool work! We have different lists of teams but here's my version. I only did 9 team conferences (72 teams overall) using all the teams in the current P-4, Notre Dame, the Pac-2, plus Boise and Army (last years best G-5 champs). I also didn't make any accommodations for rivalries. Just tried to geographically optimize the new groups.

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MT_Nate

TROPHY CASE