Unless you’ve been hiding under a social media rock since last night, the biggest discussion to come out of the NFC and AFC championship games seemed to be Richard Sherman’s short yet intense post-game interview (to which he has since responded).
Over on Tumblr, however, the discussion didn’t include Sherman at all in talk about the NFL NFC; in the 25.7k posts made about the conference since December 21st, the only player to show up in the top ten tags was Colin Kaepernick, San Francisco 49ers quarterback. Those posts came from 103.1 Tumblr users and earned 194.7k notes.
AFC chatter was slightly smaller than talk about the NFC on Tumblr; 20.9k posts, about 5k less. The AFC talkers were more engaged, however, with 140.9 users generating 213.6k notes. Two players made the top ten tags: Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback, and Peyton Manning, the Denver Broncos quarterback. Much like a high school movie, Tumblr seems fixated on quarterbacks.
Comparing the rest of the top tags around each conference, you can see a few overlaps; a lot of the conversation was unsurprisingly centered around the teams and players involved in yesterday’s championship games leading to the Super Bowl:
We’ve looked at sports on Tumblr before, and saw how humor was prioritized in top posts over hard-hitting, in-depth technical coverage of sporting events. The most popular posts from each conference reflected this:
One of the NFC’s most popular posts:
“THE SEATTLE AQUARIUM GAVE ONE OF THEIR HERMIT CRABS A SEAHAWKS HELMET AND NAMED HIM MARSHAWN PINCH”
And one of the AFC's most popular posts:
"Tom Brady couldn’t find anyone to high-five in another awkward Tom Brady high-five moment."
Both conferences had two overlapping popular posts, however: All of the NFL conferences imagined as holiday cards, and this Late Night Superlatives: NFL conference championship edition (the top image is from that post) from Jimmy Fallon’s official Tumblr.
Sports on Tumblr: Current topics in all of their hilarious and awkward glory.
