Which Arizona City Is Most Anticipating The Return Of College Football?

With the dog days of summer upon us, we are fast approaching the opening kickoff of the 2024 college football season, with the Grand Canyon State’s two FBS programs looking at disparate futures in the year ahead.

In Tucson, first-year head coach Brent Brennan takes over for Jedd Fisch and inherits a talent-laden roster spearheaded by sophomore QB Noah Fifita and wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, who combined to put up more than 4,200 yards between them last season.

The pair of former high school teammates at Servite High School in Anaheim are among the players that CFB fans in Arizona will be watching when the Arizona Wildcats kick off the season against the New Mexico Lobos on Aug. 31. You can track our Odds For The Wildcats’ 2024-25 Bowl Game here all season.

In Tempe, Year Two of the Kenny Dillingham era begins that same night with a home game against Wyoming at Sun Devil Stadium, as ASU looks to snap their two-year nosedive as a program.

In those two seasons, ASU has gone 6-18 (.250), marking the worst two-year period in Sun Devil history since the 1937-38 campaigns where ASU went 3-14-1 (.200) under head coaches Rudy Lavik and Dixie Howell.

This year, oddsmakers at FanDuel Sportsbook Arizona pin the Wildcats’ win total over/under at 7.5, while giving the Sun Devils an over/under of 4.5, speaking to the struggle that Dillingham has had in getting ASU back to respectability after the turmoil brought on by his predecessor (Herm Edwards) in Tempe.

BetArizona.com, home to the top Arizona College Football Betting Sites, used Google Trends to see which Arizona metro area is most excited for “college football,” based on search interest scores between July 24 –31, 2024.

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Arizona College Football Excitement

Rank	Metro Area	Score
1	Rio Verde	100
2	Vail	98
3	Safford	91
4	Tempe	75
5	Sierra Vista	56

Which AZ Areas Are Most Excited About CFB in 2024?

Based on search interest totals alone, it appears that Valley exurb Rio Verde is ready for some football across Arizona betting apps, with a perfect score of 100 for the master-planned community on the backside of the McDowell Mountains.

Rio Verde beat out Tucson suburb Vail (98 search interest score) and the Southern Arizona rural town of Safford (91 search interest score) when it came to CFB search interest, while ASU’s hometown of Tempe was a distant fourth, at 75.

Throw in the Army hotspot of Sierra Vista at 56 and you have the full rundown of the Arizona towns that have shown the most interest in the upcoming CFB season online, speaking to the Grand Canyon State’s love of the pigskin, regardless of whether they have a team in their backyard or not.

USA Today photo by Candice Ward.

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Author

Christopher Boan

@cgboan

Christopher Boan is the lead writer at BetArizona.com after covering sports and sports betting in Arizona for more than seven years, including stops at ArizonaSports.com, the Tucson Weekly and the Green Valley News.