With one week of March Madness finished, the nation is down to 16 teams vying for the National Championship. Out of the remaining colleges in the tournament, 12 hail from small markets or from towns that are more than 100 miles from a city with a professional sports team. However, these colleges are finding representation at the national level despite the small-markets in which they play, as their accomplishments are redefining the economic and social construction of their hometowns.
At the end of the 2018-19 regular season, Forbes ranked the most valuable college basketball programs in the nation based on the past three seasons’ revenue and found Louisville, Kentucky, Indiana, Duke and Kansas lead all teams with a combined value of $202.