Penn State finished 16th overall among NCAA schools and conferences in a ranking compiled by SportsFanGraph.com. The rankings were determined by a combination of Twitter followers and Facebook “likes” for each school’s and conference’s general Facebook and Twitter pages. These rankings do not account for pages linked to individual sports.

In terms of Facebook “likes”, Penn State just cracks the top 15 with 175,504, while @GoPSUsports1’s 5,791 Twitter followers were 43rd among schools in the rankings. A detailed look at Penn State’s numbers can be found here.

Penn State was sixth on the list among Big Ten schools, as Ohio State took the top spot by a wide margin with 991,535 total followers. Wisconsin (6th with 316,032), Iowa (11th with 212,570), Michigan State (12th with 201,874), and Nebraska (15th with 179,955) were also ahead of the Nittany Lions.

The Big Ten Conference as a whole came in at 44th overall with 43,421 total followers and likes, though they came in 5th overall with 19,578 Twitter followers. They were second among conferences behind the SEC.

A few thoughts:

• I’m surprised Penn State isn’t higher. Yes, we made the top 20, but I was expecting top 10 or even top 5 considering how large our school and alumni base are.

• I know they have one of the largest and most rabid (in more ways than one) fan bases in college sports, but I’m still amazed at Ohio State’s social media presence. They’re #1 in this ranking by over 350,000!

• How is it possible that Texas doesn’t have an official Twitter account? They’d probably destroy everyone in this ranking, including Ohio State, if they did. Illinois also does not have a general sports Twitter account.

• I’d be very interested to see a ranking that does include the pages for individual sports. I think this would benefit schools like Penn State who have the resources to have accounts for so many individual sports. Duke basketball, for example, has over 20,000 followers for @dukeblueplanet but only 2,176 for the general Duke athletics account.