Best College Football Social Media Accounts to Follow for 2015 Season

There are few things that compare to the experience of witnessing college football up close and personal. Tailgating, marching bands, high-decibel cheering and punishing hits all combine for a sensory overload that's unmatched in the sports world.

But for those not fortunate enough to live close to a college football venue or who prefer to stay home and catch it on TV, there's a perfect way to take in all the sights, sounds and hot takes of Saturdays in the fall from the comfort of one's own couch: social media.

Social media belongs to college football on Saturdays from September through December, as well as into early January, with the vast majority of tweets, many Facebook posts and quite a few Instagram photos dedicated to the game. There's probably a decent number of Pinterest updates related to the best tailgate foods or binge-watching recipes, but we'll leave it up to you to torture yourself with all those mouth-watering food pics.

The ability to monitor college football, not just through the games themselves but through the observations of others doing the same, enhances what is already a very fulfilling experience. It allows fans to avoid missing out on any minute detail while also getting a sense of what others think about a questionable call that might have altered the outcome of a contest.

With the 2015 college football season officially four weeks away, on Sept. 3, we've put together a list of some of the best social media accounts fans should be following if they want to be fully informed, educated and entertained this fall.

National Media

If you're looking for coverage from an across-the-board scale, following national writers is the way to go. Their job is to identify and react to all of the big college football stories, not just those that impact a certain team, league or region.

Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing)

Part of the Bloguin Network, this account focuses on how the media is covering sports and how that might affect the viewer. It's great at pointing out some of the odd things that come across the TV screen or get posted online, such as Twitter feuds and massive on-air gaffes.

Bill Connelly, SB Nation (@SBN_BillC)

Bill Connelly's team-by-team previews of all 128 FBS programs, which run one a day beginning in February, are a series of branches we can reach out and hold on to while navigating the never-ending quicksand that is the college football offseason. In season, he uses his keen analytical mind to highlight statistical anomalies and trends.

Bruce Feldman, Fox Sports (@BruceFeldmanCFB)

Bruce Feldman covers all the bases with his college football coverage, attending many of the biggest games and digging out great features. His game-day insights are spot-on as well.

Brett McMurphy, ESPN (@McMurphyESPN)

Brett McMurphy is best known as an insider who breaks news related to injuries, suspensions and upcoming notable home-and-home series. Without him, we wouldn't be able to pine for future matchups between orange-clad counterparts.

Paul Myerberg, USA Today (@PaulMyerberg)

Another national staple, Paul Myerberg has touched on topics and highlighted the statements of coaches and players from every major conference (and the American!) in the past three weeks. Just imagine what he'll bring to your timeline come September.

Darren Rovell, ESPN (@darrenrovell)

Darren Rovell, ESPN's sports business reporter, vacillates between highlighting food and drink trends and money-related sports news, such as apparel contracts and memorabilia values.

Ralph D. Russo, Associated Press (@ralphDrussoAP)

The AP is at nearly every game on Saturdays, but the big ones are reserved for Ralph D. Russo. He's been the international news outlet's lead college football writer for a decade and has plenty of institutional knowledge on the sport.

Andy Staples, Sports Illustrated (@Andy_Staples)

In addition to being one of SI's lead college football writers, Andy Staples does work for the SEC Network and is also a major foodie. His "Punt, Pass & Pork" columns will make your mouth water not just for game info but also for the delectable food items that Staples stumbles across on his travails.

Clay Travis, Fox Sports (@ClayTravisBGID)

Clay Travis' "Outkick the Coverage" blog is centered around college football but frequently strays to plenty of other topics. Whatever the issue, it tends to be on the incendiary side, as Travis is one of the best feather-rufflers on Twitter.

SEC Flavor

If you're looking for a more regional slant for your college football tweets, look no further than the part of the country that's home to the top conference in FBS. The SEC is overloaded with great Twitter accounts—far too many to highlight here—but Saturday Down South has done us a solid by putting together a list of the 100 essential accounts to follow.

There is one SEC-heavy account that all college football fans should be tracking, regardless of your love (or hate) for the conference. That would be that of radio host-turned-TV star Paul Finebaum (@finebaum), whose daily radio show is simulcast on the SEC Network and who is a regular part of that channel's Saturday game coverage.

Finebaum's tweets are occasionally provocative, but they're nothing compared to the things written by his followers...or about him in his mentions. Same goes for his show callers, a motley crew of diehard SEC fans who have made bellowing PAAAAAAAAWWWWWWL in reaction to something off-putting the college football version of "Where's the Beef?"

West Coast Bias

College football begins at noon on the East Coast, earlier if you're tracking the pregame and preview shows. By the time the featured prime-time games are over, most folks along the Atlantic coast and in the Midwest are plum tuckered out and need to sleep off a long day of action.

But there are still games being played out west, particularly in the Pac-12 Conference, and as we saw in 2014, some crazy things can happen during #Pac12AfterDark. A handful of the national writers will tweet about these late games, but not all of them, so to get a full sense of what's going on out there, fans need to get more localized.

Two longtime West Coast writers, Chris Dufresne of the Los Angeles Times (@DufresneLATimes) and Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News (@wilnerhotline), are your best bets if you're looking for general coverage of the Mountain and Pacific time zones. They'll mostly be at games involving California, Stanford, UCLA and USC, but they also have their finger on the pulse of what's happening on that side of the country.

Coaches (Real and Faux)

College football coaches are an interesting bunch, and many are quite colorful. We're always waiting and hoping for them to say or do something wacky, and most don't disappoint. This usually occurs during press conferences or sideline interviews, but a select few spread their brand to Twitter and thus become must-follows.

Jim Harbaugh, Michigan (@CoachJim4UM)

Jim Harbaugh's last game as a college football coach was in January 2011. His next one isn't until Sept. 3, but in the nine months since he was hired to coach his alma mater, he's become the darling of Twitter with nearly 300,000 followers. And Harbaugh hasn't just dipped his toe into the water. From day one, he dove straight into the deep end and has been splashing sunbathers on all sides of the pool.

Harbaugh wasted little time ramping up the rivalry with Ohio State with some early veiled shots at the Buckeyes, and since then, he's introduced us to the joys of shirtless-while-in-khakis football as well as a Twitter tour of France.

Whether Harbaugh will continue on this path during the season remains to be seen, but he's worth a follow just for the offseason antics.

Les Miles, LSU (@LSUCoachMiles)

Les Miles is one of the best wordsmiths in the game, though this doesn't always translate to his tweets. Last year, he only posted a handful of updates to his Twitter account during the season, though that did include an update on what Santa brought his son for being a good boy:

Steve Spurrier, South Carolina (@SC_HBC)

Steve Spurrier joined Twitter in March and has only tweeted 28 times—about once per 2,200 followers. It's hard to imagine the Head Ball Coach would ever be able to troll online like he does at the podium, but we can always hope.

Faux Pelini, Parody of Ex-Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini (@FauxPelini)

One of the best—or worst, depending on your perspective—parts of Twitter is the humor element. This is most evident in the form of parody accounts, ones that purport to be some public figure but in reality are run by someone doing his best impression of what that person might sound like in 140-character bursts.

Nearly every college football coach has one of these parody versions out there, but none are as hilarious as the one devoted to former Nebraska coach Bo Pelini.

One needs only to see the account's profile picture—a photoshopped glamour shot of Pelini posing with his cat—to understand that this is all meant in jest. Run by an unnamed Cornhuskers fan from Chicago, the account continues on even as Pelini has moved to the FCS ranks to coach Youngstown State.

Players and Students

Once the season begins, the vast majority of college football players will go on Twitter hiatus, either by choice or by team mandate. Occasionally, some will let a tweet slip out, either in exultation or frustration, and it gets passed around to every fan's timeline within an hour.

Long before he became an overnight sensation as the third-string quarterback who led Ohio State to three dominant wins last winter en route to a national title, Cardale Jones (@CJ12_) was most famous for a brief Twitter rant in which he noted that he and his teammates were there to play football, not "play school." Since he's become a superstar, though, he's had to up his Twitter game and turned it into a strong mix of trolling and fanboying.

Another notable college football player worth following, if only because he's got one of the sweetest Twitter handles in the game, is South Carolina wide receiver Pharoh Cooper (@KingTutt_chdown).

On the Instagram side, the visual element of college football comes through in bright and bold colors from USC's Dance Team (@uscsonggirls), ESPN's wall-to-wall coverage (@espncfb) or the videos that Ole Miss receiver Laquon Treadwell (@successfulquon) posted to show his long road back from a horrific leg injury last November.

Ohio State senior Braxton Miller (@braxtonmiller92) also brings a strong Instagram game, both in terms of showing off what kind of a wide receiver he's going to be for the Buckeyes and through images that poke fun at his team's recent dominance of rival Michigan.

Inanimate Objects

There are some non-people accounts that all college football fans should follow, too, especially if you want to stay informed on the big news items.

Granted, much of the information from the College Football Playoff (@CFBPlayoff) folks and the people behind ESPN College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) will likely get favorited and retweeted thousands of times within the first minute, but each is an essential follow in order to keep updated on how the playoff rankings are shaping up as well as what wackiness might have happened on Saturday mornings outside one of the week's top games.

Bleacher Creatures

Lastly, we must plug our own excellent college football staff at Bleacher Report (@BR_CFB). Our team of writers, editors and digital-media gurus work nonstop on game days to produce tons of content that runs all day and night on Saturday and throughout the week, and along the way, they often have some pretty good comments.

Ben Axelrod (@BenAxelrod), Adam Kramer (@KegsnEggs), Michael Felder (@InTheBleachers), Ben Kercheval (@benkercheval) and Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) will make sure you don't miss a thing throughout the season.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.