This is the first decrease in membership in at least a decade. The main driver was that the majority of states had very slight decreases or increases. The only major increases that I notice are NorCal, Virginia, Tennessee, which are more than balanced out by, for example, Michigan's 30-team contraction, and smaller but significant decreases of 5-15 teams in many different states. Notably - SoCal, North Carolina, Florida, and Maryland all did not register major growth of 5-10% (~20+ teams) as they have several times in recent years. I suspect the net decrease is mainly a coincidental alignment of non-increases in those states - normal growth in those (e.g. average of the preceding five years) would have boosted the national numbers by about 90 teams.
