The Kansas City Chiefs might have the loudest fans in the NFL, but apparently, that didn't do anything to help the the team's ranking in a recent study of NFL fans that was conducted by professor Michael Lewis at Emory University. 

According to Lewis, the Chiefs actually have the worst fans in the NFL, which will probably come as a shock to some people, including NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who recently said that a big reason Kansas City received an NFL-high six primetime games was due to the fans. 

At the other end of the spectrum, the battle for the top fan spot was between two teams -- the Cowboys and Patriots -- and let's just say that It looks like American's team also has America's best NFL fans. 

The Cowboys took the top spot for the second time in three years. That's good news for the guy below because I thought for sure he'd kill the Cowboys' fan ranking when he threw a helmet at Jerry Jones.

Now, before anyone starts writing any mean emails to Lewis to complain about his rankings and point out things he might've gotten wrong -- like the fact that "All Cowboys fans are bandwagoners," or that "The Chiefs should be at No. 1 ahead of everyone in the world" -- let's take a look at the formula the professor used to devise his rankings. 

To come up with the rankings, Lewis used three key criteria: Fan equity, social media equity and road equity. In a nutshell, the Fan Equity criteria basically revolves around how much fans are willing to spend on their team and how much support they show with their wallet. 

Social media equity is exactly what it sounds like and ranked fans by how many social media followers that each team has. The third criteria, road equity, is based on how much support each team gets on the road. 

To make the rankings more accurate, Lewis accounts for things like market-size and short-term changes in winning or losing. (If you need full details on all three criteria, Lewis has a 27-page explanation that you can read here, which I'm sure every Chiefs fan will do so they can pick him apart). 

If it makes Chiefs fans feel any better, the Raiders also ranked surprisingly low, checking in at No. 20. The biggest loser in these rankings might be everyone in L.A. with the Rams ranked 31st and the Chargers ranked 24th. The Chargers ranking came while they were in a city that wanted them (San Diego), so it wouldn't be surprising to see them drop for next year's rankings now that they've moved to L.A.  

Finally, I would like Chiefs fans to know that you didn't rank last in our CBSSports.com fan base rankings that came out last August. You ranked 19th. 

Anyway, you can see the entire rankings for 2017 below. 

2017 Fan Base Rankings (via Emory University):

1. Cowboys
2. Patriots
3. Eagles
4. Giants
5. Steelers
6. Saints
7. Bears
8. Broncos
9. Packers
10. 49ers
11. Colts
12. Ravens
13. Jets
14. Dolphins
15. Redskins
16. Bills
17. Panthers
18. Seahawks
19. Falcons
20. Raiders
21. Lions
22. Texans
23. Vikings
24. Chargers
25. Buccaneers
26. Browns
27. Cardinals
28. Bengals
29. Jaguars
30. Titans
31. Rams
32. Chiefs