In honor of the NIT’s quarterfinals starting tonight, it seems appropriate to talk about the complete mess that has been the NIT.

So many forces are trying to destroy this famous tournament – it is hard to believe that in 1970, Marquette turned down a bid in the NCAA tournament to play in the NIT. Into the early-1950s, the NIT was actually considered a more prestigious tournament to play. Now, it is an after-thought that continues to get watered down.

It is bad enough that teams are allowed to turn down the NIT bid. The following teams turned down a bid to the NIT

• Florida State
• LSU
• Nevada
• Northwestern
• Pittsburgh
• Providence
• South Carolina
• UNLV

Teams that turned down the NIT and the Crown Tournament – I know Indiana, WV, and Ohio State were contractually obligated to turn down the NIT once turning down the Crown – not sure about the other schools.

• Indiana
• West Virginia
• Ohio State
• Rutgers
• Kansas State
• Penn State
• Wake Forest
• TCU

The NIT also lost the following teams to the Crown Tournament when spots opened thanks to teams dropping out

• Boise State
• Butler
• Georgetown
• Villanova

So, basically, we have gone from the NIT being the 32 best teams that did not make the NCAA Tournament from also losing 20 of the top remaining teams.

It is amazing that in its inaugural season, thanks to offering 500,000 in NIL to the top 4 teams. Thanks to what appears to be a better incentive to the players as well as the contractual arrangements for the Big East, Big 10 and Big 12 with FOX, the brand new tournament starting next Monday ended up with more power conference teams than the NIT.

Here is the full field of the Crown Tournament

• Big 12 – Arizona State, Cincinnati, Colorado, UCF, Utah
• Big 10 – Nebraska, USC
• Big East – Butler, DePaul, Georgetown, Villanova
• Mt West – Boise State,
• Atlantic 10 – George Washington
• WCC – Oregon State, Washington State
• American – Tulane

The Power Conference schools that accepted a bid to the NIT

• ACC – SMU, Stanford, Georgia Tech
• Big 12 – Oklahoma State

What is worse about this – in 2024, the NIT changed their selection rules to guarantee selections from the power conferences as well as ensuring they would host a game in the first round. It used to be that if you won your regular season conference championship, you were guaranteed a spot in the NIT if you lost in the conference tournament – but because the power conferences wanted more of the money, they got the rules changed. Of course, then teams started declining the bids. Basically, the power conferences wanted the money from the NIT, but the power conference teams didn’t want to waste their time to play in it.

This created a ridiculous chaotic tournament that led to more disaster. Because remember there is also the CBI and CIT. Well, there was a CIT – there was supposed to be a CIT tournament this year, but no scheduled games happened. So you have to assume that they could not get enough interest to play.

With so many teams dropping out, they started talking to their alternates – one of those was one of the regular season champions from the Sun Belt, South Alabama, who no longer had an automatic bid to guarantee spots to the conferences that all declined invitations to the NIT.

But they also had earlier invited UC Riverside – who had already committed to the CBI. When UC Riverside made the decision to cancel their CBI commitment and play in the NIT, it took the last spot that South Alabama thought they had and already had told their players they were accepted. So, the NIT had to come back and take away the invitation to South Alabama.

The Sun Belt said in a statement, “As the top remaining at-large team not selected to the original field, South Alabama was prematurely contacted by the NIT on Sunday as a potential replacement team to fill out the 32 team bracket. With all 32 teams accepting their NIT invitations, this opportunity did not materialize. We regret the emotional impact this chain of events had on South Alabama’s student-athletes and want to congratulate Sun Belt Coach of the Year Richie Riley and his team on a historic season, including a Sun Belt regular-season co-championship.”

That was nice of the Sun Belt to try to say, but it isn’t true. South Alabama wasn’t the top remaining team – they were the 21st. What’s worse is that they wanted to play in it, but because of the complaining from conferences whose teams constantly decline the bid, the rules were changed to take away their automatic bid. In 2023, it would not have been a question – South Alabama as the 1 seed in the Sun Belt tournament would have been guaranteed a spot.

What used to be a prestigious tournament is now a joke. With the Crown poaching schools from them, and them poaching schools from the CBI and CIT, and everyone making tournament invitations at the same time, Sunday night turned into a ridiculous mess where a team thought they were invited to play and then found out as they started to celebrate that their season was now officially over. And then one of the tournaments just gave up trying to put up an event.

What is worse is that this is supposed to be a multi-billion dollar business. If this article that I am reading is correct, men’s basketball teams starting this year will receive 24% of the media rights deal for March Madness – roughly $8.8 billion over 8 years. And that is just the NCAA Tournament. I am sure ESPN is paying media rights to host the NIT, and I know that FOX is spending some money to be able to show some basketball next week with the Crown Tournament.

I guess ESPN and FOX don’t care as long as they have games to televise. But it seems ridiculous that one business would make an agreement to have their organizations participate, and then have 16 of their organizations decline and not participate.

It shouldn’t be this hard. This is a business. It should be this simple.

• The contracts dictate who gets to choose first. It is fine if the Big 10 wants to go to the Crown and the ACC wants to go to the NIT, but there should be some type of order.
• Once the guaranteed teams get in, the tournaments get to pick in order who they want. I would give the NIT the first pick, then the Crown, then the CBI, then the CIT.
• Any regular-season conference champion is guaranteed a spot in one of the tournaments. It is ridiculous that South Alabama won their conference, wanted to play in the NIT and eventually did not get to play.
• There is no choice – the schools are contractually obligated to play if they are invited.
• If you decline, you will automatically not be allowed to play in the following 2 post-seasons (including the NCAA Tournament).

People say you can’t make the players play in a tournament if they don’t want to. And I fully 100% disagree. I was sympathetic when the players were only getting their scholarships – while I felt that not being $40K in debt was a pretty nice payment, I understand that the university was getting millions for their efforts.

But I have no more sympathy in the age of NIL. These athletes are being paid. While it is all speculated, it is believed that Mackenzie Mgbako, and Oumar Ballo both made $1 million in NIL deals for Indiana. Not only are they being paid to play basketball, they are being paid extremely well to play basketball. So, you can not tell me that they have the right after taking that money to decide playing in the NIT or Crown Tournament isn’t worth their time.

Everyone keeps reminding me that college basketball is a business. I don’t know of any business that makes contracts and then allows their employees to not meet those contracts. They might be disappointed to not playing in the NCAA Tournament, but if someone is paying the university to play a few more games through an already negotiated contract, they are obligated to play.

Remember the Crown tournament is offering $300K to the winner – if that is split evenly across the team, it probably means each player is going to get $25K for playing 4 basketball games. It is such a bad look for the schools that turned down a bid to the Crown tournament to say that money isn’t worth playing.

As I rant, with about 15 seconds in a tie game, Chattanooga’s Honor Huff passed the ball to Trey Bonham in the corner who drills a three-pointer to lead Chattanooga (26-9) to a 67-65 victory over Bradley (28-8) as the Braves’ desperation full court shot off a missed free throw hits the backboard and drops to the ground. North Texas (26-8) are playing Oklahoma State (17-17) in the late game (the only power conference team left). Tomorrow, Kent State (24-11) plays Loyola-Chicago (24-11) and UC-Irvine (30-6) plays UAB (24-12).

Anyways, nothing is likely to happen. At some point, with 350+ teams in Division I, you have to figure that the 4 tournaments can find 64 teams to participate. Thus, no one will care. I just think it is a shame. I loved the NIT – it was an opportunity to watch some really good basketball teams play. The 8 teams that are playing in the quarterfinals won 70.8% of their games this year – that is pretty good. But everything leading up to this has been kind of a mess this year – and that is disappointing. Since that is more likely to continue than be fixed.