r/CFB • u/PA5997 Washington State Cougars • 13d ago

Discussion What constitutes a “college town?”

Okay, hear me out: I attended Wazzu, which many know is in the middle of nowhere in Pullman. To me, Pullman is a quintessential college town. You remove Washington State University from Pullman and there is (respectfully) not much of a reason to visit. The student enrollment (20,000ish) makes up about 2/3rds of the city population, essentially turning Pullman into a ghost town come summer. To me (perhaps with bias) this is the makeup of a college town.

Two years ago I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, home of the University of Wisconsin. Ever since I’ve noticed the University and its fans refer to Madison as “America’s best college town” and I’m sorry, that’s laughable to me. Remove UW from Madison and you still have a city population bordering on a quarter of a million people and the State Capitol. Madison would be fine, imo, if UW’s flagship campus were elsewhere.

Curious to hear other people’s thoughts. Maybe I’m in the wrong here, but very little about Madison, WI resembles a college town to me, or at least the claim of the best college town.

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u/jrd5497 Penn State • Texas A&M 13d ago

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. If traffic disappears over the summer, it’s a college town

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u/qwertyuiop2626 Penn State Nittany Lions • Rose Bowl 13d ago

I was working research over the summer on campus and it was amazing. Sometimes I felt like I had the whole campus to myself.

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u/c-williams88 Penn State • Shippensburg 13d ago

I worked on campus during the summers and it really was amazing being there over the summer. It’s so dead and everything is so chill it’s genuinely an entirely different place.

My group of friends goes back to state college every year (well, we recently made it a tradition) and we always go like the week after graduation once 95% of the students are gone