Brookings Tops Vermillion By 100 Spots as Top Football City

On the field of play, South Dakota State football has certainly outshined the University of South Dakota and now the cities where both universities are housed are getting compared to each other as well.

You can chalk up another win for SDSU on this one, as Brookings has been pegged as a better football city for fans than Vermillion.

Brookings, SD tops Vermillion by over 100 spots as the higher ranked city for football fans and top city in the state according to a recent list by WalletHub.

The city of Brookings comes in at No.68 edging out others like Durham, East Lansing, Auburn and South Bend.

That's right, Brookings ranks higher than the cities that house the Auburn Tigers and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

Vermillion comes in at No.180 with a better spot than places like Tulsa, Tucson, Bowling Green and Madison.

Yes, Vermillion is a better city for football fans than the home of the Badgers and Wildcats.

Vermillion is likely to get a boost moving forward with the improvements to the Dakota Dome and with some more success on the field, could put a real dent in their gap with SDSU 2021.

WalletHub used numerous methods in coming up with their list, including the following:

In order to determine the best and worst cities for football fans, WalletHub compared 245 U.S. cities based on 21 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for football fans.

For our sample, we chose cities with at least one professional football team (NFL) or at least one college football team (NCAA, including FBS and FCS). We then grouped the cities by division — “Pro Football” and “College Football” — and assigned weights to each divisional category based on its popularity among fans.

The No.1 city for football fans according to WalletHub is Pittsburgh, PA, followed Dallas, Boston, Green Bay and New York rounding out the top five.

The worst city on their list for football fans out of 245 markets was St. George, UT others on the bottom of the list including Providence, Louisville and Fort Collins.

For the complete list of top football cities for fans from WalletHub and more information on how they determine their finalists, you can visit their website.