New Data Reveals SEC’s Most Toxic Fan Base This Football Season

It's a tight race at the top, but some interesting new data suggests one SEC football fan base takes the cake when it comes to airing their grievances.

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Once again, the traditional airing of grievances has emerged as the native ritual among college football fans this fall, and plenty of teams around the country and especially in the SEC certainly have reason to not be satisfied with what they see on the field.

But when looking over the raw data, one SEC fan base sticks out above the crowd halfway through the 2026 college football season. That’s according to some interesting new data pulled from comment sections.

Who Tops the SEC Toxicity Rankings?

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New analysis of SEC fan bases has crowned LSU as the most toxic this football season, according to information tabulated by Gator Analytics, a data scientist who went through all the 1s and 0s to pull the data together.

LSU’s subreddit scored a “Toxicity Index” of 130, clearing the SEC average by 30 whole points, making it the clear leader in online hostility. 

Tiger fans generated 13,479 online comments between Aug. 1 and Oct. 11, with 14.6 percent of them containing curse words and a particularly high rate of abusive remarks. 

The data paints a picture of a passionate, often volatile base of support quick to unleash insults and rival negativity, all of which has increased dramatically since LSU’s 4-2 start that includes losses at Ole Miss and Kentucky.

How the Index Was Built

Gator Analytics created the SEC Toxicity Index using natural language processing on thousands of Reddit comments across all 16 SEC football subreddits.

🚨 SEC Fanbase Toxicity Index 🚨

The index equally weights profanity, insults, hostile language, negativity toward rivals, and abusive comments. 100 = SEC average.

I used natural language processing (NLP) to analyze thousands of reddit comments across all 16 SEC team subreddits… pic.twitter.com/SRbzydsrfB

— Gator Analytics (@gatadata88) October 12, 2026

The score equally weighs five factors: profanity, insults, hostile language, negativity towards rivals, and abusive comments. A score of 100 represents the SEC average.

Sample sizes varied, with smaller numbers for Mississippi State and Vanderbilt noted as limitations, but the directional trends hold, forming part of a broader series examining fan sentiment, including delusion and emotional instability metrics.

A Close Second Place Emerges

Texas sits firmly in second place with a 114 Toxicity Index number, producing the second-highest volume of comments at 46,064, of which 14.1 included profanities.

Last weekend’s loss to unranked Oklahoma, courtesy of Arch Manning’s two interceptions that led to OU points, and culminated in the loss of that No. 1 AP ranking, has not tampered the edge in their subreddit discourse.

Abusive comments appear at a rate of 29 per 1,000, placing them near the top in pure hostility volume, as well. A relatively new SEC member, Texas fans have quickly adopted the conference’s intense online culture.

A Look at the Top Five

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Behind LSU and Texas came Auburn in third place, followed by Ole Miss, and then Texas A&M to round out the top-five.

Auburn’s 3-2 record and high rate of online abuse – 33 such comments per 1,000 – fuel their ranking, while the Rebels and Aggies are driven by strong negativity and insults mostly towards rivals despite more modest comment volumes.

Texas A&M fans had cause more recently to get a little more juiced up this week when head coach Mike Elko took it upon himself to direct some hate towards famed message board TexAgs in comments that went uber-viral in Aggieland.

‘Clean’ Bama’s Surprisingly Low Ranking

Alabama landed at 13th in the SEC in toxicity, below the conference average. And that’s despite posting the highest comment volume of the bunch (53,709), but those remarks are pretty clean overall: just 14.8 percent of them contained curse words.

Crimson Tide fans’ discourse appears less laced with pure insults, hostile language, and rival-targeted abuse relative to total volume.