10 Craziest Student Sections in College Football

Winning on the road in college sports is harder than winning on the road in professional sports. For the most part, crowds are louder, more invested and more impactful.

But among those loud, invested, impactful crowds, certain student bodies project as the best in college football. They're the loudest, most invested, most impactful of the bunch. 

Appointing the 10 craziest student sections in college football is a difficult task—one that is by nature subjective. I haven't been to every stadium. I haven't seen them all firsthand. This is my well-researched, semi-well-informed opinion, not a mathematical study.

My main criteria boiled down to two questions: How often do you bring your A-game? And how good is your A-game when you bring it? I also looked at 2014 attendance, per Jon Solomon of CBSSports.com, and accounted for recent performance. These are the 10 craziest student sections in college football at this moment.

What have they done for me lately?

Honorable Mention: Tennessee Volunteers

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At its best, Neyland Stadium can affect a game like no other stadium in the SEC. Under Butch Jones, it has crept back toward its best.

Is it there yet? No, but it's getting there.

The Volunteers went 7-6 last season and are rising toward their former powerhouse status; and the fans, who never went away, have duly taken notice. Even with a young roster and a mid-game quarterback switch, they hung close at home against eventual SEC champion Alabama, trailing by just 10 points with 16 minutes to play.

Earlier in the season, Tennessee made a strong Utah State team look like it belonged in Division III, and in 2013, when it finished 5-7, it took Georgia to overtime and beat South Carolina on its home field.

Hat tip to the fans for all of that.

Alabama Crimson Tide

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Success has not made Alabama fans jaded. The Crimson Tide still average more than 100,000 fans per game, and when ranked teams visit Tuscaloosa, those fans still influence the outcome.

Take, for example, the 59-0 drubbing Alabama laid on Texas A&M last season. That game was over before the ball was even kicked. Alabama jumped out on the Aggies and then rode the crowd to a historic margin of victory, the same way it manhandled Florida earlier in the year.

Shout out to the guy with the ring hat.

Florida State Seminoles

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Spencer Hall of SB Nation visited Tallahassee, where Florida State hasn't lost since 2012, for last year's Boston College game. Afterward, he wrote a fair and fitting characterization of 'Noles fans, who were about to watch their team win its 27th consecutive game.

In Hall's words:

"

Florida State—if you want to address them as a whole, collective personage—knows. They know. They know you hate them, and their quarterback, and their fans, and their fans on Twitter, and their win streak, and their war chant. They know you hate how, a year after winning a national title with landslide results and obvious dominance at every position on the field, they now escape games like a burglar leaping over the fence with one cheek of his pants in the guard dog's mouth. They know. Oh, they know.

They know, which is why you see garnet-and-gold-themed "haters gonna hate" T-shirts floating around campus on game day, even now, when most fans are shuffling around in hastily purchased ponchos or waterproof fishing jackets. They'll zip down the jacket just to show you: look, we are comfortable with this role. We know it now, we have the dialogue down. After offering me a shot of Fireball and cider, one tailgater tells me, "Listen, if you want to hate, go ahead. We'll keep on winning. That's the bottom line here: winning." It's rehearsed, but the line delivery is perfect and unaffected.

"

Hall's piece hinged on a spot-on thesis: Florida State fans play the villain as well as the villain deserves to be played.

Regardless, stay away from #FSUTwitter.

Georgia Bulldogs

Start with The Georgia Joker—a member of the ESPN Fan Hall of Fame. Then consider this possessed-by-the-devil young student above.

"Crazy" is the only appropriate word for the Spike Squad.

Sometimes Georgia's craziness bites the wrong way: e.g., blaming every bad thing that happened the past eight seasons on former offensive coordinator Mike Bobo, one of the best offensive minds in the business, who this winter accepted the head coaching job at Colorado State. Even head coach Mark Richt sometimes feels the wrath.

This type of craziness—the type that screams FIRE COACH X!!! after every loss or turnover—is misguided, but it stems from Georgia's bloodthirst to win a title. It's come so close so many times.

Bridesmaid syndrome makes for perfectly crazy fans.

LSU Tigers

There's something about Tiger Stadium—especially at night—that makes winning on the road seem impossible.

More likely than not, that thing is Tigers fans.

Last year, Death Valley reached peak levels against Ole Miss. The Rebels entered 7-0 and ranked No. 3 in the country; LSU entered 6-2 and No. 24. Both teams need desperately to win, albeit for different reasons, and what ensued was one of the ugliest, scrappiest, most physical games of the season—the entire thing fueled by the crowd.

LSU won 10-7 after a brilliant game-winning touchdown drive and a head-scratching Bo Wallace interception (as if there is any other kind). Afterward, Kiri Walton of NOLA.com posted a video of of the Tigers student section, warning that it might induce "sensory overload."

She's not wrong.

Ohio State Buckeyes

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Football is religion in Columbus. Is that a cliche? Yes. And a tired one at that. But there's really no other way to describe it.

Last year, the Buckeyes averaged 106,296 fans per game, supplanting rival Michigan for the No. 1 attendance in the country. The Wolverines fell to No. 3 but also (a) watched their fans leave early during a rain delay against Utah, and (b) distributed free tickets with the purchase of an on-campus Coke product against Minnesota.

Which rival belongs on this list? The answer is painfully clear.

Oregon Ducks

Chris Pietsch/Associated Press

Autzen Stadium is loud. Real loud. It's the college football equivalent of The Clink: home of the NFL's Seattle Seahawks.

It's unclear how they've done it, but the Pacific Northwest has unlocked the secret for making football games sound like airport runways. The ruthless combination of crowd noise and Oregon's style make winning on the road a daunting task. Example: last year's Michigan State game, when the Spartans led by nine in the third quarter but crumbled down the stretch and lost 46-27. Once the Ducks get going, they're gone.

Side note: The Pit Crew is also as pioneering as any student section in the country. Check this inflatable beer pong table for proof.

Penn State Nittany Lions

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Sometimes they get crazy in a bad way. The Paterno Truthers are one of the worst things about college football. But we can't omit one of the bar-none craziest fanbases, 99 percent of which is crazy in a good way, on the weakness of its bottom one percent.

Even after everything they've been through, PSU fans make Happy Valley one of the hardest places in the country to win. It averaged 101,623 fans per game in 2014—the No. 6 attendance in the country and a 5 percent increase from the previous year.

The team has suffered mildly from scholarship restrictions, but last year Beaver Stadium helped Penn State push Ohio State, the eventual national champion, to double overtime. With second-year head coach James Franklin, one of the craziest (in a good way) coaches in the country, on the sideline, Penn State should be back in no time.

Texas A&M Aggies

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Many other student sections are big. Many other student sections are loud. And at this point, many other student sections call themselves "The 12th Man."

What makes Texas A&M unique is organization. The Midnight Yell is one of the most bizarre but impressive traditions in college football. The student body floods Kyle Filed the night before each home game and practices its screaming against an empty, jet-black stadium.

Unlike fans at most schools, where a small number of students would participate but the majority—apathetic, too-cool-for-everything teenagers with better things to do on a Friday—would abstain, Aggies fans stand in solidarity for their traditions. They care about this voodoo magic more than others.

They're crazy in the best possible way.

Texas Tech Red Raiders

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Prior to last season, Jake Trotter of ESPNDallas.com named Texas Tech's student section the best in the Big 12:

"

Bucking a national trend of declining student attendance to college football games, Texas Tech actually set a student season-attendance record in 2013 … [Head coach] Kliff Kingsbury gave out cash prizes to the best costumes during Tech’s home game against Oklahoma State, which fell two days after Halloween. The students responded and arrived dressed up as everything from Bender from the TV show 'Futurama' to William Wallace from 'Braveheart.' There was also a 'future Mrs. Kingsbury' donning a bride’s dress.

"

Awesome.

The games to which Trotter referred took place in 2013, but the Red Raiders stepped up in 2014, too. The team went 4-8 and posted its lowest winning percentage since 1983, but attendance still rose 2 percent from the previous—record-breaking—season.

Fair-weather fans, these are not.

Wisconsin Badgers

This isn't only about "Jump Around."

It's also about the atmosphere, the drinking, the tailgates, the drinking, the numbers, the—actually, who are we kidding?

It's pretty much about "Jump Around."

The Badgers play House of Pain's immortal 1992 anthem between the third and fourth quarters of every game, and the student section—no matter the score or who they're playing—gets louder, rowdier and more belligerent than most stadiums during the fourth quarter of a tied game against the biggest rival.

"The stadium definitely shakes," said Mike Oliva, a Wisconsin engineering professor who has studied Camp Randall's movement, according to Pete Thamel of The New York Times. "People in the upper deck tend to feel like the motion is anywhere from 2 inches to 10 inches."