It is time to get college basketball crazy, folks.
With college basketball conference tournaments taking place right now, and March Madness less than a week away, the personal-finance website WalletHub.com yesterday released its March Madness Stats & Facts infographic, as well as its report on 2021’s Best Cities for College Basketball Fans.
WalletHub crunched the numbers on more than 290 cities using nine key metrics. They range from the number of teams per city and the winning percentage of each to arena capacity and social-media engagement.
It was no surprise that college hoop-crazed cities such as Durham, NC (Duke Blue Devils), and Lexington, KY (Kentucky Wildcats), came in at the number 1 and 2 spots, respectively.
Locally, Storrs, CT (UCONN), came in at the five spot, while Chapel Hill, NC (North Carolina Tarheels) rang in at seven.
At the bottom, though, New Britain, CT, slumped at 287, while Stephenville, Texas, sat at 291.
To read the full report and to see where your city ranks, please visit:
http://wallethub.com/edu/best-cities-for-college-basketball/32944.
Interesting college basketball nuggets:
- This coming NCAA Basketball Tournament will be the first time a single state (Indiana, with the majority of the tournament’s 67 games taking place in Indianapolis) will host the tournament in its entirety (after being cancelled for the first time ever in 2020).
- $600M: Annual revenue loss for the NCAA in 2020 due to COVID-19.
- $8.2 Million: Salary for college basketball’s highest paid coach, Kentucky’s John Calipari (vs. $1M combined for University of Kentucky’s president and the state’s governor).
- 45.5X: Difference between the average NBA rookie’s salary ($3.3M) and a D1 men’s athlete basketball scholarship for a year ($71.4K).
— Jerry Del Priore
