Is Texas A&M Shreveport’s Local College Football Team?

After last week's poll over who Shreveport's local college football team was, and after getting a definitive answer, you'd think we'd be done with this topic.  But unfortunately, we're not.  A 710 KEEL listener points out that it is neither Louisiana Tech nor Northwestern State.  He says it is Texas A&M.

Now, this isn't just a willy-nilly claim.  Listener Troy Faaborg actually put some numbers behind his argument that Texas A&M is Shreveport's college football team.

"I heard your debate and it sounded like there was a lot of emotion, a lot of pride that was involved," Faaborg explained.  "I thought 'there's got to be a way to put the math to this."

In a mildly scientific manner, Faaborg went through all the major universities around Shreveport-Bossier and created a "Shreveport Relevancy Rating."  To put it simply, he took the enrollment numbers from the area schools, compared it to the distance of the campus from our metropolitan area.

We know it doesn't factor in the football program (I'll come up with that factor shortly), but it does show how much "influence" different schools have on our area.

Here are the numbers:

1. Texas A&M University.  SRR: 230.2
2. Louisiana Tech University.  SRR: 167.8
3. University of Texas.  SRR: 144.1
4. Northwestern State University.  SRR: 131.6

Faaborg notes that LSU and ULM came in at fifth and sixth respectively.

Texas A&M is 230 miles from Shreveport, or about a 4 hour drive.  A&M has a campus in Texarkana.

LSU is 265 miles from Shreveport, about 3 hours and 45 minutes by car.

University of Texas is 335 miles from Shreveport, ULM is 103 miles from Shreveport.

Angela and I definitely thought that La. Tech or NSU were the local teams, but could we both be wrong?