DALLAS — The Dallas Cowboys may not be participating in the Super Bowl this Sunday, and they may not have even gotten close to the big game since 1996, but America's Team still remains popular and dominant when it comes to their place in the spotlight.
According to new data from OhBets, which parsed through Google search data from the past 12 months, the Cowboys are the most popular NFL team in 15 states, including California, which has three NFL teams in the San Francisco 49ers, Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers.
There is no question that Texas leads the way for Cowboys queries with 2,240,000 Google searches per month. Second place goes to California with 445,000 searches per month. Virginia has 246,000 searches per month for the Dallas squad, and North Carolina, which actually has the Carolina Panthers as the state’s most-searched team, was still fourth place in the Cowboys rankings with 110,000 related searches.
The other states that the Cowboys carried were Idaho, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Connecticut, Alaska, and Hawaii.
The second-most popular team in terms of states carried was the New England Patriots with five: Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Comparatively the Patriots' top state, Massachusetts, had 246,000 searches per month.
The gulf between most regarded Dallas and second place New England can be seen with Maine at 49,500 searches, New Hampshire with 49,000, Rhode Island with 33,100, and Vermont with 9,900 searches for the Patriots.
The Minnesota Vikings carried four states — Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota — representing the third-most based on states carried. Minnesota searches for the Vikings 450,000 times monthly with Iowa having 90,500 searches, and North Dakota and South Dakota each pulling 60,000 searches a month.
The two Super Bowl participants, the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, carry three states apiece, and all bordering their home states. The Eagles claim a following in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware while the Chiefs are renowned in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska.
Leading the league in Google searches is one thing, but Cowboys fans would rather sit atop the NFL in Super Bowl wins, a task which even owner, president, and general manager Jerry Jones has acknowledged is difficult.
"Certainly the Super Bowl is the thing that a check can’t write to get," Jones told "K&C Masterpiece" on 105.3 "The Fan" [KRLD-FM] on Sept. 30, 2022. "I know how to compete or risk or have emphasis. I’d rather spend it over here rather than spend it over there financially. I know how to do that, but the Super Bowl is — only one gets to win it. There’s a lot of people going for it, and there’s a lot of ambiguity. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong in your plans going toward a Super Bowl. So, it’s got to be the most difficult thing I’ve ever tried to do relative to the other things I’ve done with my life. And, so, it’s a challenge, and therein lies the secret."
If the Cowboys are leading the league in popularity-by-state enduring such a championship drought, one can only imagine the deluge of popularity once the titles start stacking up again.
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