As Duke and North Carolina prepare to meet Wednesday in their first tilt of 2012, there will be lots of talk about which team has the better program. Most of these conversations will revolve around the same basic arguments: how many total wins, how many Final Fours, how many championships.

But what if you tried to measure the success of every college basketball team by another, more coldly practical measure: how much money its alumni have earned by playing the sport professionally?

The Richest of the Rich

The college-basketball teams whose alumni have earned the most money in the NBA, starting with players who entered the league in 1985.

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The Wall Street Journal collected the names of every college player who entered the NBA in or after 1985, the year the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams (now 68). For all the players on that list, we looked up their total NBA compensation and assigned those dollars to the college teams they played for.

For the most part, The Journal's ranking looked a lot like most lists that rank college basketball programs by wins. Marquee names like UCLA, Kansas, Kentucky, Arizona, Michigan and Georgetown all cracked the top 10 with at least $496 million in aggregate earnings.

Near the bottom of the list, starting at No. 258, there were such basketball outposts as Monmouth, Liberty, Northwestern State and Brigham Young-Hawaii. NBA players from these schools have earned less than $150,000.

North Carolina's Rasheed Wallace (1993-95) Allsport/Getty Images

There were a few surprises. Despite its legendary 2006 Final Four run, George Mason came in near the bottom at No. 262. And while San Diego State came into last year's NCAA tournament as a No. 2 seed, it also landed near the bottom.

Among top-earning schools, the first non-major-conference team was UNLV, which finished No. 15 (the Runnin' Rebels can thank Shawn Marion, currently of the Dallas Mavericks, who has earned about $107 million). The second non-major-conference team was No. 19 Xavier, thanks in large part to the $110 million earned over 12 seasons by journeyman forward Brian Grant.

Among the sport's most-famous programs, the school that fared the worst was Indiana, which finished at No. 41, just ahead of Oklahoma State. (The Hoosiers' most famous product, Isiah Thomas, played too early to be counted.)

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Early on, it became clear that this study would come down to the two teams you might expect: North Carolina and Duke. So which of these rival teams' players came out ahead?

Duke's impressive roster of more than 30 NBA wage-earners, which has made almost $809 million so far, begins with small forward Grant Hill of the Phoenix Suns (over $134 million) and power forward Elton Brand of the Philadelphia 76ers ($126 million to date).

Jay Williams, the former Duke guard who was drafted No. 2 overall in 2002, said players who choose Duke (or Carolina) have a certain mental make-up that allows them to thrive in the NBA. He attributed his break-out sophomore season to the arrival of star freshman Chris Duhon, a top recruit who played the same position. He said the fear of losing his job—and the desire to beat Duhon—forced him to work harder.

Jay Bilas, a former Duke standout, said he attributed Duke's success to obvious reasons: The school gets more five-star recruits because of its reputation. And once they're there, the team's celebrated coach, Mike Krzyzewski, who has been at the school since 1980, teaches them well.

Ex-Duke star Grant Hill (1990-94) Getty Images

But in the end, the team that came out ahead, both in the sheer number of NBA earners (at least 34) and the total amount earned to date ($853 million) was North Carolina. Led by Rasheed Wallace and Vince Carter, both of whom have earned more that $134 million, the Tar Heels took down Duke by almost $45 million, finished $115 million ahead of No. 3 Arizona and nearly $300 million more than No. 8 Kansas.

What's more, when you factor in Michael Jordan (drafted in 1984), James Worthy (1982) and a couple dozen old-timers from the 1950s, '60s and '70s whose salaries are not known, it's absolutely fair to say that the Tar Heels are the first college team—possibly in any sport—whose former athletes have earned more than $1 billion in salary playing the same sport professionally. If you factor in endorsement income, Jordan alone might make the Tar Heels' lead insurmountable.

Donnie Walsh, who played for the Tar Heels before spending 30 years as an NBA coach and executive, said North Carolina's dominance in recruiting started with former coach Frank McGuire in the early 1950s. In an era when most programs recruited mostly in-state, McGuire used his New York City ties to bring top players from the north to North Carolina. All these years later, high-school players with NBA aspirations still want to go to North Carolina—partly because of the coaching, but partly because North Carolina has always developed NBA players. The school's reputation as an NBA factory has become so ingrained that it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy: Carolina continues to churn out top players because recruits know Carolina churns out pros.

"If you asked 100 kids where they would play if they could go anywhere, a huge number would say Carolina," said Evan Daniels, a national recruiting analyst for Scout.com. "It's the Jordan factor, it's the Nike factor, it's the baby blue. It's an aura around that school."

Could any team break the Duke-Carolina hammerlock on the top two spots? While it's not likely any time soon, most analysts say the team with the best chance is No. 9 Kentucky. While the Wildcats are currently $300 million in the hole, they have a lot of young wage-earners in the league. Since John Calipari took over as coach, the Wildcats have had eight players picked in the NBA draft in two years.

Write to Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com