Wow 4 pages into the thread and someone finally points out the other big markets in the Big 12.
I did a quick breakdown by adding up the populations of states by which major conference (Big12, SEC, Big10, PAC10, Big East) they would likely fall into. States like Iowa and Florida were split down the middle since they had major schools in both conferences. States without a major school were listed as NA with New York being the biggest that does not appear to have a school in a major football conference (did I miss someone obvious?).
Conf Population # States
ACC____37,598,000_____5
BIG10___65,376,000_____8
BIG12___43,706,000_____7
BIGEAST 16,151,000_____4
NA_____38,370,000____17
PAC10__52,721,000_____4
SEC____45,481,000_____9
# States adds up to 54 because the census breakdown includes DC, and Iowa, Kentucky, and Florida are split between different conferences.
Again, this breakdown includes the whole state population and does not include college football tv viewership which is really the way to look at this. Of course, you have to somehow normalize for games that are nationally televised versus regionally televised.
BTW, I had no idea that 3.6M people lived in Oklahoma, at least as of July 2006.