Why college basketball’s NIT can’t die, and the NCAA’s tournament field will soon expand

Just as college football players now treat the second- and third-tier bowl games as a trip to the proctologist, so, too, are today’s era of college basketball players who view the NIT as the Avocados From Mexico Cure Bowl.

Until the current pay-for-play model is tweaked, and includes language or incentives to play in these level of games and events, players will bail to either turn pro, or to put their names in the NCAA’s transfer portal.

Shortly after the NCAA released the teams for the 2024 men’s basketball tournament Sunday evening, the “undesireables” were invited to the NIT, including Mississippi. For more than a week, college basketball sources said Ole Miss let it be known it would pass on an potential NIT invite.

Mississippi may be the Rebels, but on this just call them the Ole Miss Trend Setters. Other notable programs with Ole Miss to pass on NIT bids include Rick Pitino’s St. Johns, Pittsburgh, Indiana, Oklahoma and Memphis.

We have seen teams pass on the NIT before, but never like this. Because an inordinate number of teams “stole bids” by winning their conference tournaments last week, it resulted in more than a few deserving candidates left out of the field of 68.

(That Indiana State was left out and Virginia was included is March Madness.)

More schools bailing on the 32-team NIT was inevitable, and it will only hasten the expansion of the NCAA Tournament field as well as how the collectives that help pay the players structure agreements.

Television schedules will keep the tournament from expanding beyond three weeks; nearly all of these events are set according to schedules established by major networks. For the last several decades CBS has anchored its spring sports coverage schedule around the NCAA men’s basketball tournament leading into the Master’s golf event.

As long as you work within that one month window, just plan on March Madness going to 80 ish teams. That means 22 percent of the NCAA’s 351 Division I basketball programs would be eligible for its postseason.

The NCAA’s main source of revenue is the men’s basketball tournament. Some veteran college athletic officials insist that it is the organizations only real source of revenue. (Long story, but the NCAA really doesn’t own NCAA football the way you think it should; it blew that one back in the ‘80s).

The NCAA’s current broadcasting rights for its men’s basketball tournament with the CBS and Turner sports runs through 2032. The original 14-year contract was for $10.8 billion; the eight-year extension is worth $8.8 billion.

The NCAA needs/wants more money, so feeding its cash cow a few more buckets of bakery waste is going to happen. That will basically mean one additional round of tournament games.

The purist howls that by adding more games only lessens March Madness. Also, the NCAA has fed its fat cow for years:

In 1939, the first NCAA Tournament featured eight teams.

In 1951, the field expanded to 16.

In 1975, the number of teams grew to 32.

In 1985, the bracket widened to include 64 teams.

In 2001, an “opening round” game was introduced.

In 2011, three more games were tacked on to the “opening round,” and it was called the “First Four.”

Adding 12 more teams, and jamming two more days full of first round games, is coming. Because you may have noticed that adding games/teams to this event has not damaged its popularity, or “ruined it.”

Whether adding more games/teams will kill the NIT is doubtful. Little known fun fact, the NCAA bought the preseason and postseason NIT events as part of a lawsuit in 2005.

Whether teams keep avoiding the NIT is another matter.

Former Marquette, Indiana and Georgia coach Tom Crean used his platform on ESPN to rip the programs that passed on the NIT. His point was to play the games.

“I would want to coach. I would want to develop my team,” he said. “There’s not plenty of time for guys to continue to play that may never play again.”

It should be noted that in 2017, Indiana passed on playing in the NIT when its head coach was Tom Crean. The school said it didn’t want to play in the NIT because students were on spring break, a reason often cited by programs to avoid playing the games.

The NIT started in 1938, and for many years it was the top college basketball tournament. The NCAA’s bracket eventually drowned out the NIT, but the chance to play in the NIT’s home of Madison Square Garden was a nice apple.

Those days are long, long gone.

Even before the creation of the transfer portal, the NIT had become a problem. Players were sporadically interested, and selling tickets to such a “mid” event has been a challenge for years. The event moved out its home at Madison Square Garden to Las Vegas in 2023, and this year it’s scheduled to be played at Butler’s Hinkle Field House in Indianapolis.

“I am concerned about it because I grew up a New York City kid and, for my father, the NIT was huge,” TCU coach Jamie Dixon said in a phone interview. “He was always as excited about the NIT as he was the NCAA, so I will always have the romanticized version of the NIT.

“I still think it has value, but I also realize it’s all different now. It’s changing.”

As long as a TV network craves live programming, and gamblers will watch it to see how their picks are progressing, the NIT will enjoy the same existence as the long list of college football games that are attended by a few thousand, and carried in bars across the country.

The NIT won’t go away, the NCAA Tournament is due for growth spurt.