Without Googling, tell me who won last year’s National Invitational Tournament. How about the 2019 edition?
If you’re able, I assume you are either a fan of those teams (Memphis and Texas are the answers, if you wondered) or a true college basketball junkie. And there’s nothing wrong with that! Just as there’s nothing wrong with the continued existence of the NIT in concept.
Execution is another story.
The most the NIT has been prominent in the sports news cycles for the last decade or so is this week with reports of its exit from Madison Square Garden. The NIT has not existed as anything more than ESPN inventory for awhile, so any discussion of its prestige after say, UConn winning in 19881, is a non-starter.
But removing the tournament from MSG removes any remaining symbolic value. Madison Square Garden is the NIT, full-stop, and moving it to any other traditional college basketball mecca — like the proposed Hinkle Fieldhouse residency — doesn’t quite live up to the allure of MSG.
The history between the NIT and Madison Square Garden, established when the National Invitational Tournament was college basketball’s premier postseason event, differentiates it from other non-NCAA Tournament events. Remove it, and I’m not certain the NIT has much of an identity.
In contrast with the looming uncertainty of the NIT’s future, the College Basketball Invitational seems to have found a winning formula. The upstart tournament eschewed on-campus games in response to COVID-19, instead playing exclusively at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach.
The CBI remained in Daytona Beach this year, and filled its field with the best available mid-major programs. The result were some exciting games, capped with a double-overtime championship between UNC Wilmington and Middle Tennessee teams with 26 wins each.
UNCW coach Takayo Siddle touted the tournament in his post-championship press conference, citing both the opportunity for upperclassmen to end their careers with a title, and for getting underclassmen more playing time in preparation for the next season.
It’s a simple formula: Invite teams that want to be in the tournament and will compete, offer an attractive destination — in the case of the CBI, it’s a Spring Break destination — and don’t drag out the event too long.
The NIT can’t, nor should it, follow the same model, but it needs a quality that characterizes it as more than Teams That Fell On The Wrong Side Of The Bubble. With MSG off the table for the next couple years, finding a new signature trait is a must.
In the era of NIL, somehow leveraging the new financial opportunities opened to athletes might be a solution. 3x3U over Final Four weekend pays $100,000 to the winning team, albeit made up entirely of seniors who exhausted their eligibility.
A title sponsor that awards a cash prize at the conclusion could freshen the tournament up a bit, giving it more appeal to the players involved and differentiating the event itself from the NCAA Tournament. What’s more, paying the players at the end is a poetic representation of how sports have evolved from the 1950s, when money was the root of the NIT’s decline2.
Another proposal for restoring some prominence to the NIT is through the Season Tip-Off edition.
The Postseason NIT’s declining prominence is a relatively well-covered topic, but I have been exposed to far less conversation about the erosion of the NIT in November. Those who were around for it remember the NIT as the most prestigious of the preseason tournaments, followed in the ‘80s by the Great Alaska Shootout and ‘90s by the Maui Invitational.
Once a 16-team tournament, this year’s NIT Season Tip-Off featured just four teams and was played entirely at the Barclays Center — not Madison Square Garden. Essentially, it’s been reduced to the status of any of the interchangeable early-season tournaments with sketchy corporate sponsorships played in indistinguishable venues.
My idea for the NIT Tip-Off is actually a pie-in-the-sky proposal I tweeted in the spring of 2020 as the pandemic first shut down our world (and which Mike DeCourcy chided!): A season-opening tournament with the teams that would have made up the field of the 2020 NCAA Tournament, with the reward at the end being an automatic berth into March Madness.
Getting the NCAA on-board with providing an auto-bid over Thanksgiving weekend is probably not realistic, but certainly elevates the stakes considerably. Even without dangling that carrot, an expanded field featuring a representative from every conference (plus a few at-large invitations to fill out to 32 participants) could give the NIT the feel of a March Madness appetizer.
To further promote that idea of becoming an early-season Big Dance, on-campus games are dumped in exchange for regionals at static locations, each of which represent the legacy of college basketball in some way. The Tournament then culminates at Madison Square Garden over Thanksgiving weekend — NOT Barclays Center.
EAST REGION: The Palestra or Boardwalk Hall (Atlantic City)
The Palestra ranks among the most iconic college basketball venues, so I tend to lean using the Philadelphia gymnasium. However, I have a soft spot for Boardwalk Hall. Either option is a winner, and would host representatives from the Big East, the ACC in alternate years, the MAAC and more.
MIDWEST REGION: Hinkle Fieldhouse
While I’m not in love with moving the NIT from Madison Square Garden, Hinkle Fieldhouse’s inclusion in the NCAA Tournament bubble of 2021 was awesome. More marquee events should be held there, and this restructured NIT is ideal for hosting a regional with teams from the Big Ten, MAC, Missouri Valley, etc.
SOUTH REGION: Greensboro Coliseum
The longtime home of the ACC Tournament and site of the 1974 Final Four — a transformative Final Four in the game’s evolution — would host teams from conferences including the SEC, SoCon, etc., and the ACC in years that its representative is from the original ACC.
WEST REGION: Las Vegas
Las Vegas has become the epicenter of Western college basketball, so it’s only fitting to feature the NIT West Region there. Venue is of less importance than the location, though I must say that T-Mobile Arena is perfectly located and an absolutely beautiful venue that I have seen rocking for marquee basketball live. Two of the loudest games I have ever covered were the 2016 CBS Classic between Kentucky and North Carolina, and the 2018 Pac-12 Championship between Arizona and USC.
Since every conference that would feature a representative in this region already stages its tournament in Vegas — the WCC, Mountain West, Pac-12, WAC and now Big West — it only makes sense.
The NIT of the ‘80s was still very much a big deal — certainly not up to the level of the 1950s and earlier, when the NIT champion had a legitimate stake to claim a national championship, but far more so than today. To wit, Most Valuable Players of the ‘80s include Ralph Sampson (1980) and Reggie Miller (1985). Miller’s exploits at the ‘85 NIT with UCLA were a precursor to his professional ownership of Madison Square Garden.
1950 NIT champion CCNY doubled up as NCAA champion, but members of the team were later discovered to have fixed games. The NCAA Tournament long avoided Madison Square Garden in the aftermath, as the venue was a hotbed for illegal bookmaking. I highly, HIGHLY recommend the book The City Game for a detailed exploration of the New York college basketball gambling scandal.