Party Schools vs Football Schools

There are party schools. There are football schools. And at first glance, at least with these data, they're not at all the same.

The Niche party rankings are useful because they include pretty much every school, unlike the Top 20 rankings we often see. That way I can start with the football rankings (here, the most recent AP rankings) and compare that to how well the schools ranked in, um, partyness. You'll see the table below. I can tell you there next to no correlation here (r = -.01).  The top five ranked football schools had an average party ranking of 99.4, in large part hurt by Mississippi State's dismal 255 ranking and, to a lesser degree, Auburn's surprising 108 ranking. No doubt also scramming the data is Baylor, ranked 10th in football and, wow, 800th in partyness. Also, having highly ranked party schools like Wisconsin and West Virginia at the bottom of the Top 25 football rankings helps make the correlation next to nothing.

The Rankings

	Football		Party
Mississippi State	1		255
Florida State	2		21
Auburn	3		108
Alabama	4		24
Oregon	5		89
TCU	6		70
Michigan State	7		16
Notre Dame	8		361
Kansas State	9		40
Baylor	10		800
Arizona State	11		43
Mississippi	12		49
Ohio State	13		22
LSU	14		67
Nebraska	15		84
Oklahoma	16		156
Georgia	17		3
UCLA	18		53
Clemson	19		171
Utah	20		489
Arizona	21		133
Duke	22		182
Marshall	23		180
West Virginia	24		8
Wisconsin	25		6

A few nerd points. The mean (average) party school ranking among the Top 25 football schools is 137.2, the median is 70. Why the difference? Because the mean is sensitive to outliers (I'm looking at you, Mississippi State, Baylor, Utah), hence it drags the number higher in this case. So we have a median of 70, meaning half the schools are above 70, half below. Well, except TCU, which sits right at the median. Four of the Top 10 schools are above the median, meaning that while they excel at football, their party school skills -- as measured by Niche's iffy methodology -- leaves something to be desired.

The worst stretch is from #20 to #24 (Clemson through Marshall). Five teams in a row above the party median.