Sarah Quintanar, an assistant professor of economics at UALR, knows a thing or two about serious football rivalries.

In “Everybody Hates a Winner, and You are Close to Your Rival: A Study of Rivalry in College Football,” Quintanar and her co-authors explain what factors compel fans to cheer for one team and disdain another.

The article will be published in an upcoming issue of “Economic Inquiry” and was co-written with Drs. Cary Deck and Javier Reyes of the University of Arkansas and Sudipta Sarangi of Louisiana State University.

Building on studies of factors that influence rivalries between nations and siblings, the economists wanted to see if those same factors drive sports rivalries. They used college football as a prototype, where some of the biggest rivalries play out in stadiums across the U.S. every year.

Through the use of conference-level data from a survey of college football fans, the authors came to several conclusions.

For instance, Boise State is the most hated college football team in the country. The strongest football rivalry between two universities is Central Michigan University versus Western Michigan University.

As for the Southeastern Conference? That’s between the University of Alabama and Auburn University. Two other SEC teams, University of Arkansas and LSU, have the 55th strongest rivalry out of all existing rivalries.

However, LSU does not have strong feelings towards Arkansas. About 68 percent of Arkansas fans consider LSU the strongest rivalry while very few LSU fans consider Arkansas its strongest rival; that distinction goes to Alabama.

“We all had a lot of fun working on this paper,” Quintanar said. “I love being able to apply economics to subjects that may not traditionally be thought of as related to economics.”

Quintanar said she hoped the paper inspired students to study economics and find their own passion in the subject. Quintanar received her Ph.D. from Arkansas’ rival, LSU. She teaches microeconomics, applied econometrics, and business statistics at UALR.