Why are there 350+ D1 basketball programs? Isn’t that excessive? Shouldn’t half of them be in a lower division compared to the big boys?
Division 1 Basketball
- Thread starter FastMJ
- Start date
Not when you have teams like Bellarmine and Wright State beating Louisville. This is a much different game than football where almost anyone can get lucky or be better than a "big boy"
March madness is all about the 350+ teams.
Is it my imagination or is the number of D1 programs steadily growing? Every year I see a whole new slew of schools on the scoreboard that I’ve never heard of
There are about 2800 4-yr colleges in the US. so D1 represents about 12.5%
The newer transfer rules and ease of the portal make lower programs much more competitive. They may lose their top talent upward, but there's a lot of talent available that struggled in their first year or two in higher tier programs, too.
As a fan I'd rather compete for a D2 title than a Southland title but more people hear about the 16 seeds than the D2 champs so that's why it happens
The allure of the money and notoriety (which increases applications) of getting into the NCAA D1 tournament.
Seriously? I feel like there’s very little fan support outside of the D1 level. There’s no way I’d prefer for my almamater to be a top D2 school vs. a contender for the Southland autobid.
