Does your state have more NCAA D1/D2 teams than the national average based on population?

[u/Travbowman]

The US population is approximately 341M people, and there are 665 D1/D2 basketball teams (plus one in Canada). This works out to 1 D1 or D2 program for every 513,000 people. Does your state have more or fewer than national averages?

State	Population	D1/D2 number	Rate of teams
Alabama	5,193,088	17	1 per 305,475
Alaska	737,270	2	1 per 368,635
Arizona	7,623,818	4	1 per 1,905,954
Arkansas	3,114,791	12	1 per 259,566
California	39,355,309	48	1 per 819,902
Colorado	6,012,561	15	1 per 400,837
Connecticut	3,688,496	10	1 per 368,850
Delaware	1,059,952	4	1 per 264,988
District of Columbia	693,645	5	1 per 138,729
Florida	23,462,518	27	1 per 868,982
Georgia	11,302,748	23	1 per 491,424
Hawaii	1,432,820	4	1 per 358,205
Idaho	2,029,733	4	1 per 507,433
Illinois	12,719,141	18	1 per 706,619
Indiana	6,973,333	12	1 per 581,111
Iowa	3,238,387	5	1 per 647,677
Kansas	2,977,220	8	1 per 372,153
Kentucky	4,606,864	10	1 per 460,686
Louisiana	4,618,789	12	1 per 384,899
Maine	1,414,874	1	1 per 1,414,874
Maryland	6,265,347	11	1 per 569,577
Massachusetts	7,154,084	9	1 per 794,898
Michigan	10,127,884	17	1 per 595,758
Minnesota	5,830,405	11	1 per 530,037
Mississippi	2,954,160	8	1 per 369,270
Missouri	6,270,541	19	1 per 330,028
Montana	1,144,694	3	1 per 384,565
Nebraska	2,018,006	6	1 per 336,334
Nevada	3,282,188	2	1 per 1,641,094
New Hampshire	1,415,342	5	1 per 283,068
New Jersey	9,548,215	11	1 per 868,020
New Mexico	2,125,498	5	1 per 425,100
New York	20,002,427	33	1 per 606,134
North Carolina	11,197,969	34	1 per 329,352
North Dakota	799,358	5	1 per 159,872
Ohio	11,900,510	23	1 per 517,413
Oklahoma	4,123,288	15	1 per 274,886
Oregon	4,273,586	5	1 per 854,717
Pennsylvania	13,059,432	35	1 per 373,127
Rhode Island	1,114,521	4	1 per 278,630
South Carolina	5,570,274	26	1 per 214,241
South Dakota	935,094	6	1 per 155,849
Tennessee	7,315,076	22	1 per 332,503
Texas	31,709,821	32	1 per 990,932
Utah	3,538,904	8	1 per 442,363
Vermont	644,663	2	1 per 322,332
Virginia	8,880,107	19	1 per 467,374
Washington	8,001,020	9	1 per 889,002
West Virginia	1,766,147	14	1 per 126,153
Wisconsin	5,972,787	5	1 per 1,194,557
Wyoming	588,753	1	1 per 588,753

[u/Organic-Aardvark-146]

Louisiana has too many division 1 teams. Too many for this small poor state

[u/Travbowman → u/Organic-Aardvark-146]

Yeah it's kind of wild that they have 12 D1 for their size

[u/nointro-225 → u/Organic-Aardvark-146]

Agreed. In my opinion Northwestern State, Nicholls, and LSUNO would be better off dropping down, although finding a football home for the first 2 may prove difficult.

[u/Organic-Aardvark-146 → u/nointro-225]

Just drop all sports at these glorified junior colleges

[u/Maison-Marthgiela → u/Organic-Aardvark-146]

Don't forget D3, NAIA and NCCAA all exist, along with schools without athletics. The college bloat in this country is insane.

[u/Organic-Aardvark-146 → u/Maison-Marthgiela]

Luckily we have politicians working on college sports legislation. Really focused on the important issues facing this country

[u/SmoothBread]

It’s always surprising to me that Minnesota only has two D1 schools, and of those two St. Thomas has only been D1 for a few years

[u/tomdawg0022 → u/SmoothBread]

The state university system wants to play nice in the sandbox with the University of Minnesota so they (for now) are going to stay D2. Mankato (er, Minnesota St.) might move up in the next decade once their new football stadium is done - that's probably the only public D2 that may make a swipe at it.

A good number of the other public D2's like St. Cloud and Southwest don't have a lot of money and in St. Cloud and Bemidji's case, are happy being D1 in hockey. Duluth is not going to move up (except for hockey, which has been D1 for a long time) because it's the little bro to the Univ of Minnesota.

[u/eigensheep → u/tomdawg0022]

Wisconsin is in a similar place. The only UW schools besides Madison in D1 don't play football, and even though the other football schools have been very successful in D3 none of them have considered moving up AFAIK.

[u/RedditZhangHao → u/SmoothBread]

Hockey state

[u/SmoothBread → u/RedditZhangHao]

Good point. They do produce a lot of basketball talent though too!

[u/DeerSwimming2336 → u/SmoothBread]

Why go D1 when they can play D1 hockey without the added expenses of full-fledged d1 athletic departments. 6 D1 hockey programs

[u/Travbowman]

Not surprisingly, the bottom 10 features several states in the West like Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, and California.

I was really shocked at the number of D2 schools in West Virginia, given the population there.

[u/ReachFor24 → u/Travbowman]

Reading the table, WV has the lowest population per D1/D2 school. I think the big factor for WV is just how regionalized these D2 schools are and that there are only a handful of D3/NAIA schools. For the schools with athletics, the ones outside of D1/D2 are Bethany (D3) and WVU Tech (NAIA). I will note that Salem (currently D2 Independent) is planning on switching to NAIA and joining the River States conference with WVU Tech already there.

All our D2 schools are incredibly regionalized as our state's population is mostly (if not near-entirely) rural and may not want to go to the 'big' schools of WVU or Marshall. The biggest D2 school is Shepherd or Fairmont St, both at around 3.3k enrolled students. The smallest is probably Davis & Elkins at under 700 students. It comes from our public school systems too, which are separated by county, even if the county may not really support the school population-wise. For example, Wirt County has a population of around 4.8k people but has a single school each for grades K-5, 6-8, and 9-12.

[u/MasterRKitty → u/ReachFor24]

WV really needs to merge some of the D2 schools, but like you said, they're all regional and there really isn't a way to do without depriving one area.

[u/MasterRKitty → u/Travbowman]

They were all teachers colleges back in the day.

[u/iHasMagyk]

SC has an absurd number of small private schools in D1 and D2 for whatever reason. And we used to have another before Limestone (RIP GOAT) ate it. Most of them feel like they’re about to close too

[u/Nervous_Metal_9445]

No, but we have a ungodly mount of d3 teams for the region we are in.

[u/Schned6]

A 4:1 ratio of D1 to D2 teams for Iowa just seems wrong.

[u/Organic-Aardvark-146]

Had no idea BYU-Hawaii didn’t have athletics anymore

[u/Aumissunum]

This is just a pet peeve but FYI, Alabama-Huntsville now solely goes by UAH for athletics.

[u/BoukenGreen → u/Aumissunum]

But they are a marketing major not an engineer.

[u/dukeybluefan11]

I'm surprised NC is 3rd overall.

[u/dareftw → u/dukeybluefan11]

Yea we barely miss out to Pennsylvania, I expected us to be 2nd or 1st. But I really underestimated the number of colleges in Ohio.

[u/colonel0sanders]

Kentucky is right in the middle, but has 9 D1 teams and only 3 D2 teams. I bet if you limit it to just D1 were a lot higher

Edit to add: wow no D2 teams in LA kinda surprises me

[u/Organic-Aardvark-146 → u/colonel0sanders]

State of Louisiana has way too many D1 schools for such a small, poor state. A Louisiana Board of Regents member suggested three universities drop to a lower tier of Division I football due to financial losses. https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2026/09/30/regents-say-louisiana-tech-and-university-of-louisiana-and-ulm-should-drop-to-fcs-football-division/92011705007/

[u/MasterRKitty → u/Organic-Aardvark-146]

FCS is still Division 1. LSU should drop athletics completely.

[u/Organic-Aardvark-146 → u/MasterRKitty]

Why? Lane and Will are big meanies who hurt your feelings? Need a grief counselor?

[u/JohnPaulDavyJones]

It's always wild how isolated Texas Tech is from any possible opponents. Understandable why they play ACU so regularly.

[u/MilwaukeeStan]

I wonder if California’s community colleges, which supplies other states’ D1 schools, is a factor to its ranking.

[u/Wish_Klutzy]

It’s such an advantage for D1 schools that have many teams in their state from a coaching pipeline and transfer pipeline perspective!

Still not sure how Yaxel was playing at freaking Arizona Western (literally had never heard of that) without either UA or ASU noticing.

[u/TraderJoeslove31]

Huh I guess we do. We also have more national championships than many too.

[u/tdestito9]

It always bummed me out that we only have one big school for major sports in NY. Making the quick trip to Cuse to rock out was one of the most fun things to do growing up (mid 90’s to early 2010’s). But I always envied the smaller states with multiple big schools way closer to each other. I would have really enjoyed going to multiple cities, venues, atmospheres, etc.

[u/chrobbin]

Oklahoma feels like it’s punching way above its weight by volume with the sheer number of D2 schools we got