NIT selection process to change

It is a joke

Conferences should decline participation, but they won’t

Watch out as this will begin to cover all NCAA sports

Entertainment lives
We sign up, bite our tongue, or step up to another level

The world is going to leave those ranked below the top 75-100 in the dust

Pick your poison

Or blow up the NCAA and truly force them to represent all schools, as there are over 350 D1 programs

Force professional sports to fund the top 100 and those remaining can recreate the NCAA for its true role

A less nefarious explanation might be that the NIT needs a higher percentage of power conference teams in the field to retain sponsors, attendance, viewers and advertisers.

Not hard to imagine the NIT losing money on Stonehill or Bryant.

The NCAA should tell us if the NIT, their only duplicative tournament should remain merit based like all the other sport national tournaments or if merit is already covered by the NCAA basketball tournament and they can't afford to subsidize another money losing tournament like probably all the non-basketball tournaments are, so the NIT has to be self supporting.

Today’s The Athletic
Surprise changes to NIT basketball format anger league commissioners. ‘That’s just wrong’

By Dana O'Neil

Coaches are angry. Conference commissioners are furious. They feel jilted, blindsided and hoodwinked. It’s fair to say that the NIT hasn’t generated this much emotion in 40 years.The reorganization of the secondary postseason tournament has everyone on high alert — not just because of how the selection process has changed but also because of how the news was delivered.

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No vote. No warning. A source on the men’s basketball oversight committee said they had not been given a heads-up. Nor was the National Association of Basketball Coaches informed, according to executive director Craig Robinson. Save for an email sent 30 minutes before the actual news dropped on Friday afternoon, no one had any advance notice that the 2024 NIT would undergo a wholesale change, eliminating automatic bids for all regular-season champions who fail to survive their conference tournament, with those instead going to the Power 6 teams with the top NET rankings who don’t make the NCAA Tournament.

The lack of transparency is wildly out of character, especially from an organization that painstakingly solicits feedback on even the smallest decision. And it left commissioners, who usually at least understand the rationale of a decision even if they don’t support it, unable to offer any explanation to angry athletic directors and coaches.

“Shocked,’’ said Atlantic 10 commissioner Bernadette McGlade, who was at her conference’s cross-country championships when she heard the news. “And my take is not really related to the event itself, to the NIT. My concern is a bigger picture concern: You have the NCAA leadership making a public declaration that six conferences are going to be treated preferentially, and in a protected class for access to a postseason NCAA event. That doesn’t seem fair.’’

Technically it’s fair, or at least allowable. Though it is owned by the NCAA, the NIT operates separately from the national governing body. In 2005, the NCAA ended years of litigation with the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association and purchased the NIT for $40.5 million. It was then set up as an LLC and is run by a board of managers. Those managers are not required to go through the typical NCAA route of committee approval and membership vote to make changes to the tournament structure.

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Short story: The NIT very much could make these unilateral — and even wholesale — changes without asking for anyone else’s feedback. “I know it’s an LLC, and I know they can do this, but this is contrary to how we operate and how we should operate,’’ said Ivy League commissioner Robin Harris. “You’ve removed access for a large number of our membership without soliciting any feedback, and that’s just wrong.’’

The big question commissioners have is why. Why the change? Why the subterfuge? Two high-level college administrators, who were granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the situation, told The Athletic they were left with little choice; that changing the NIT might be the only way to save it.

In September, The Messenger reported that Fox was negotiating a new postseason tournament to be played in Las Vegas involving teams strictly from the Power 6 conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, SEC and Pac-12). The catch in that proposal: The top two teams from each league that do not make the NCAA Tournament would be required to play in the Fox deal. That would leave the NIT picking over the carcass of what is left behind; by last year’s standards, for example, the NIT could have chosen from Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, LSU and South Carolina in the SEC, or St. John’s, Butler and DePaul in the Big East.

That would make, insiders feared, for an untenable and unwatchable product. The dirty little secret no one in college hoops likes to admit to is that, as much as fans love Cinderella, ultimately they prefer name brands. Last year’s NIT Championship game between UAB and North Texas averaged 370,000 viewers, down 63 percent from the Xavier-Texas A&M title game a year earlier, according to Sports Media Watch. It was the lowest-viewed audience for an NIT title game in 12 years.

As the NCAA prepares to renegotiate its NIT (and women’s basketball) deal with ESPN, people at both the national headquarters and on the NIT board of managers believed that their only recourse was to attract those Power 6 schools with an option similar to the Fox plan, though it may be little more than a stop-gap. The Fox deal is by no means dead. Multiple sources say it remains attractive to Power 6 schools who prefer the one-site option to the travel required to participate in the NIT, not to mention the fact that Fox would pick up the entire travel tab and perhaps down the road sweeten the deal with other revenue opportunities the NIT simply can’t match. “Could they still leave?” one source says. “Absolutely. But at least we convinced them to stay in the short term.’’

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At what cost, though? This is a change to the NIT, but it’s not just about the NIT. The near-universal anger and disillusionment stems from a far deeper place. Commissioners of smaller conferences are worried that the NCAA’s posturing here toward favoritism of the Power 6 is a pivot away from what the organization is meant to be about. “Do I care about the 2024 NIT?” said Patriot League commissioner Jennifer Heppell. “Yeah, I do, but what I care more about is NCAA leadership in this area, where their perspective is lying on the issue of access for all conferences. One of the most significant values of relationship with the NCAA is the championship structure, and that is having an automatic qualifier that gives you a chance.’’


Right now fall sports are headed into their conference championship seasons, with automatic qualifiers on the line for NCAA championships in those sports. Harris was headed to Providence and Boston for Ivy League women’s soccer and field hockey tournaments. The irony is, her league probably doesn’t need to worry about AQs in those sports. Four Ivy teams are in the top 25 in women’s soccer; three in field hockey. “But it’s the principle,’’ she said. “It’s the message, it’s the process and most of all, it’s the access.’’

Nowhere, of course, is access more appealing than in college basketball, where Florida Atlantic can compete in the same Final Four as four-time (and now five-time) national champion UConn. No doubt FAU would have made it via an at-large bid last season, anyway, but had 26-9 Colgate lost in the Patriot League final? Probably not. “We just found out about this as exhibition games get underway,’’ said Horizon League commissioner Julie Roe Lach. “For our student-athletes, knowing they have the NIT opportunity if they can’t be perfect for two days in our conference tournament is a very big deal. And now that’s gone.’’

The slippery slope some fear — that this will beget changes to all of the championships — is not so easily navigated. The NCAA Tournament — and the 25 other championships still fall under the traditional membership purview. Format changes would require wading through the traditional channels of oversight committees, sport committees and ultimately a membership vote to change actual bylaws. While there is worry about the NCAA Tournament changing — especially as expansion conversations gain steam — there doesn’t seem to be any real appetite for undoing what is, inarguably, the best (and most profitable) event the NCAA has going for it.

go-deeper
GO DEEPER
With supersized conferences, the NCAA Tournament might have to expand to survive
But there is justifiable discomfort in creating a sort of caste system within the Division I ranks that continues to reward the teams at the top of the food chain at the expense of everyone else. “Slippery slope? The whole thing is set up as a slippery slope, if you ask me,’’ said the NABC’s Robinson, who has fielded plenty of phone calls from aggravated coaches. “We are beholden to the money, and the folks with the money get to dictate everything. That’s what this is showing me.’’

Echoed American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco, whose football-playing conference continues to be forced to the outside looking in. “This is just wrong. Not just because nobody got wind of it. It’s just wrong, period. You’re disenfranchising conferences that put a lot of stock and do well in basketball. The other issue is the self-anointing of conferences. When is this ever going to stop, this self-anointing of importance?”

Along with guaranteeing the Power 6 teams spots in the NIT — which, for the record, plenty of power conferences turn down after either NCAA snubs or disappointing seasons — the NIT also now has automatically rewarded them with home games. That’s an effort to lessen the appeal of Fox’s Vegas-only locale, but it’s another gut punch to the revenue stream for smaller schools that welcome and need games on campus. “It’s a missed opportunity to get teams that wouldn’t otherwise get on your home court,’’ says MAC commissioner Dr. Jon Steinbrecher. “If teams are only willing to play in this event if they can host a game, that to me says something about all of this.’’

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That, perhaps more than anything, is the real rub in all of this. The last round of conference expansion has removed any semblance of collegiality in college athletics. A 100-year-old league has crumbled and its last standing members, Washington State and Oregon State, have filed an injunction against their former partners. The ACC nearly had to stiff-arm its members into agreeing to admit Stanford and Cal, and even with the additions, Clemson and Florida State could leave.

Saving or killing the NIT will not be the death knell in any of this, but a Power 6-tilted format delivered with the sneakiness of a perfectly timed Friday news dump isn’t easing anyone’s worries. The commissioners all say they intend to make their displeasure known — some already have reached out to NCAA executive vice president Dan Gavitt. “Is it the end of the world? No. We have so many fish to fry with the College Football Playoff issues (and) the NCAA Tournament expansion conversation, but the NIT has importance to a lot of schools,’’ Aresco said. “Let’s not minimize that. But more than that, the camaraderie within the NCAA seems to be fraying considerably. This does not help. It does not help at all.’’

The NIT autobid is/was a relatively new thing. Didn't exist until 2007 or 2008 when the NCAA took over the operations of that tourney.

Prior to that, there were plenty of mid-major appearances, including ours in 2005-2006 when we beat ND. Of course, it may have also been more teams then. 48?

I guess the biggest difference is that back then, and up until now, no sub-.500 P5s were in it.

And the biggest thing is that these mediocre, possibly sub.500 power conference teams not only are getting in and taking spots from mid-majors, they're guaranteed to play AT HOME!!

Even prior to this, though, I notice that the NIT always seemed to find a way to make it so that 4/5 first round matchups between a power school and a mid-major always somehow worked out so that the big school was the 4 and the small school the 5, rather than the other way around. I remember in 2010 William & Mary traveled to UNC Chapel Hill and lost a close game in one of those 4/5 NIT matchups. Had the game been in Williamsburg, I can tell you the Tribe win that day.