At some point in the past few years, somebody put together a survey of CFB fanbases, and the demographics regarding how many people in major metro areas identified themselves as CFB fans. IIRC, at that time, BYU and UCONN were in the same range, with about 700k who were identified as fairly involved Cougar or Husky fans. Given their numbers shown by the info in this thread, which eclipse the total population of Conn. by a wide margin, I can't say I am all that impressed with their numbers. At that time we were only a several years old full fledged IA program, and they'd been at it for many decades.
The other thing I remember about that poll, which is a salient point, was when you compare metro Atlanta to metro NYC, there are far more fans per capita that identify themselves as CFB fans in Atlanta vs NYC. Even though metro NYC dwarfs metro Atlanta in population, the total number of people that identify themselves as CFB fans in each metro area was about the same.
There was a time when the Ivy League schools, along with Army and Navy, were all nationally relevant powers. Unfortunately that is ancient history, and the interest level in major NE metro markets dropped precipitously since the Ivies de-emphasized CFB and banned bowl games in the 1950's. The ACC is finding that out the hard way right now in Boston.
Since then, the handful of NE schools still playing major CFB were never smart enough to form a league for football. If Syracuse, Penn State, Pitt, WVU, BS College, Rutgers, Temple, Army and Navy could have put together a football conference many years ago, perhaps the NE wouldn't have become the dormant CFB market it has become. Whatever became of the Lambert Trophy? That could have become a decent and nationally competitive conference, at least among the top teams.
I still think the NE can become a great CFB market again, but now it can only happen through non-conference matchups like us playing Syracuse, Rutgers, WVU, Pitt, Penn State and BS College, and all of those teams playing each other. Only the three ACC teams play each other now regularly. Apparently nobody on Tobacco Road has yet figured this out. Put us in the ACC and you at least re-introduce three more of those rivalries automatically, meaning you could almost completely own the NE market, and all of New England. Rutgers will continue to wallow in the B10 cellar, so there will be little market competition generated by them.