Big Time College Football and Red vs. Blue

There are 117 teams that play at the highest level of college football, NCAA Division IA. I decided to see where these campuses are located in our Red vs. Blue landscape and found some interesting results:

States won by Kerry: 19 (38%)
States won by Bush: 31 (62%)

I-A schools in states won by Kerry: 34 (29%)
I-A schools in states won by Bush: 83 (71%)

Counties won by Kerry: 569 (18%)
Counties won by Bush: 2572 (82%)

Counties that contain a I-A school won by Kerry: 53 (47%)
Counties that contain a I-A school won by Bush: 60 (53%)
(Harris County, Texas, (voted for Bush) and Los Angeles and Santa Clara Counties in California, and Washtenaw County, Michigan (voted for Kerry) each contain two I-A schools.)

It appears that the presence of a large university in your county correlates well with whether your county voted for Kerry.

There are of course many important universities that do not play I-A football--the Ivy League is I-AA, for example--and these tend to be in Kerry country. Five Kerry states do not have a I-A team--Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Delaware. Four Bush states do not have a I-A--North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Alaska.