NCAA Basketball: Programs who should be considered “blue bloods” in 2019

There is certainly royalty in the NCAA Basketball landscape, but who are the Blue Bloods?

Roughly a year ago I was floating around one of the NCAA Basketball message boards I frequent and someone asked the question: “Which programs do you consider to be Blue Bloods?” 

I had never really thought about it. It was always just kind of a given for me who they were. North Carolina, Duke, Kansas and Kentucky. Four. That is it. In order to qualify you need to be consistently exceptional. The same standards I have for Hall of Fame inductees. I even summed it up in the following sentence:

“A blue blood program is one that, when they offer a scholarship to a recruit, I stop paying attention.”

That statement was actually received better than I anticipated. Many people nodded in agreement, or at least that’s what I pictured them doing as they typed their responses.

Since 1990, those four schools have been responsible for 13 National Championships, or 43%.

As I pondered however, there are programs who have a claim to be in the prestigious company of the quartet mentioned above. Some from back in the day, others earned their consideration more recently, while others have shown a level of consistency over a foolishly long period of time.

The first one up is probably the most obvious.