There was a time during my childhood in Indiana when I had no idea that there was such a thing as Indiana State. I suspected there might be, because I knew there was a Michigan State and a North Carolina State and an Oklahoma State. But I didn’t learn about Indiana State University until I learned Larry Bird’s back story.

Indiana State is a member of the Missouri Valley Conference, which is also home to Illinois State and Missouri State. While all three of these “States” are fine schools, when it comes to athletics and research, they are a step below Indiana University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Missouri.

This sort of thing isn’t unusual. In many states, the school named for the state is the flagship institution in the state university system, while [name of state] State and [name of state] Tech are a tier below. Perhaps they have fewer graduate programs or a smaller undergraduate enrollment or don’t field a Division I-FBS football team.

There are plenty of states where this isn’t the case. Schools such as Michigan State, Iowa State, and Georgia Tech hold their own—athletically and academically—against Michigan, Iowa, and Georgia. (If Iowa State doesn’t win the Cy-Hawk Trophy this weekend, I might remove them from this list.)

Both of these scenarios are common. (Arkansas is a bigger deal than Arkansas State, but Kansas and Kansas State are more or less on the same level, and so on.) Far less common are situations in which [name of state] State University is a bigger deal than [name of state] University or the University of [name of state].

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