Turns out “shieldys,” football fans who watch only the NFL, are a real phenomenon.

The audience for the NFL season opener was much larger than the marquee college football matchup from the same week, though a third of the NFL audience also watched Ohio State University beat Texas, according to a new analysis conducted by media intelligence firm Samba.

The discrepancy speaks to the derogatory term “shieldy” that has emerged this football season to describe someone who watches only the NFL and ignores college football (at least until the NFL draft in the spring, when shieldys start evaluating whom their teams might select). The term refers to the NFL’s shield logo.

To examine the shieldy phenomenon, Samba analyzed the most highly-anticipated matchups in both leagues for week one of the NFL season: The NFL opening game between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, and the top ten college football showdown between the Ohio State Buckeyes and Texas Longhorns.

The NFL opener was a rematch of the previous season’s Super Bowl and was one of only a handful of games in NFL history to be played on a Wednesday. The Ohio State-Texas game was a meeting between the No. 1 and No. 5 teams in the nation (respectively) at the time, a potential preview of the national championship game and a crucial data point in the long-running debate over whether the Big Ten or SEC is the best conference in college football.

The report shows that there are indeed many shieldys in our midst, though there are also some football fans who enjoy both the pageantry of college football and watching the best players in the world play on Sundays.

The NFL Audience is Substantially Larger

The Patriots-Seahawks game averaged 11 million households per minute and reached 23.7 million households over the course of the broadcast — much larger than the 6.8 million households per minute and 14.9 million total household reach for the Buckeyes-Longhorns game.

This is to be expected; the NFL is the most popular sports league in the country and is increasingly popular internationally.

The NFL Has a Huge Time-shift Audience

NFL fans are more willing to catch up on games they missed, according to this analysis.

The NFL opener reached 31.3 million households including time-shifted audiences — viewers who watched a recorded or on-demand version of the game after the initial live broadcast — a 32 percent increase from the live audience. The college football game had a time-shifted lift that was half as much (16 percent), and its total reach increased to 17.3 million households.

Not only are NFL fans larger in number, they’re so rabid that they will watch a game after its conclusion rather than merely look up the score online.

A Third of NFL Fans Also Watched the CFB Game

If these games are any indication, then the majority of NFL fans are indeed shieldys.

Just less than a third (32 percent) of households who watched the NFL opener on Wednesday also watched the college football showdown that weekend.

NFL Audiences Are Higher Income, Less Diverse

There were notable demographic differences between the audiences for the two games — namely, that the NFL audience was older and higher income, while the college football game audience was less racially diverse.

Using College Football to Achieve Incremental Reach

That college football fans coined a term to knock NFL-only fans speaks to the intense devotion college football engenders. It also suggests a degree of defensiveness about college football’s popularity paling in comparison to the NFL’s. 

College football fans can take solace in knowing that while they can’t compete with the NFL in revenue and viewership, their sport is a unique one, with quirks, traditions and histories the NFL lacks.

Marketers should likewise view college football as a unique opportunity to reach new audiences and achieve incremental gains for their campaigns. Buying the NFL will help marketers reach a wide audience, but honing in on college football can help them reach the right audience for their brand.