The NIT is a joke.
That was the consensus when Clemson, the higher seed and
playing at home, defeated Belmont and its students
rushed the court. I am very, very pro-rushing
the court but even that was a bit much for me to handle.
So what is to be done about the tournament that once carried
so much weight that Marquette
turned down an NCAA Tournament bid to play in it.
As a UConn fan, the NIT holds relevance and a place in my
heart. My first exposure to the burgeoning UConn dynasty came in 1988 when the
Huskies stormed to an NIT title*, a run that would catapult the Huskies from
regional basketball team to eventual three-time national champion.
*Yes, UConn fans rushed the court at MSG after
the win.
In college football, people watch all the bowl games even if
none of them matter. Next year, there will be an actual
four-team playoff, rendering the other bowls – a number that is seemingly
growing by the day – an exercise in the absurd. Why do we care about the Cotton
Bowl when the playoffs start the next day?
In college football, those bowl games are the equivalent of
the NIT. While some are mocked, others are lauded – who wasn’t watching
Johnny Football on New Year’s Eve?
It is even more curious considering the venue for the NIT is
New York City and Madison Square Garden. All this week, players such as Shabazz
Napier have been talking about how much the building means to them and the
sport as the NCAA East Regional prepares to take over the buildign. As Napier
said in a
New York Post interview:
“You’re playing on one
of the all-time best places to play basketball. It feels like what basketball
was meant to be for — performance. It’s like a big performance. Playing on that
court, it’s only right that you play as hard as you can, ’cause it’s in the sense
of being disrespectful of not playing your hardest ’cause that’s the court that
many people dream of playing on. You can date back to the guys who played on
that court that I looked up to — Michael Jordan, [Julius] Erving and all them
guys played on that court, Magic [Johnson] … a lot of those guys that you see
on clips of all-time greats.”
I believe the NIT has potential. In fact, if I had my way, I
would make the NIT a big-time tournament that people paid attention to. How?
Let’s count the ways…
1) Move the NCAA
Tournament to 64 Teams
I can already hear the cries from VCU and Tennessee fans,
teams that played so well in the NCAA Tournament after being invited to the
First Four. That doesn’t change the fact that neither team earned their way into
the tournament proper during the regular season.
I’ve already advocated for the move to 64 teams for health
of the regular season, but it would help the NCAA Tournament and the NIT.
Look, the First Four is stupid. You can argue otherwise. I simply won’t agree
with you.
Look at the four teams that were in Dayton – Xavier,
Tennessee, N.C. State and Iowa. These are good teams. They are not going to win
the national championship. They never were. They could win the NIT. It would
improve the quality of the NIT.
An added benefit of the First Four’s removal would be truer,
more accurate seeding. By removing 4 16 seeds, the entire bottom part of the
draw is completely out of whack. Mercer was a 14 seed that should have been a
13 seed. A team like Coastal Carolina – a true 15 seed – played Virginia tough
for 30 minutes. Could they have beaten a 2
seed like Villanova?
2) InsaNITy
When are the NIT games played? Who knows, right? ESPN dots
them throughout the week without rhyme or reason. There was an NIT game going
on Sunday afternoon against Wichita State/Kentucky. I guarantee you that was
not a good idea.
It shouldn’t be that hard – especially if we eliminated the
dreadful, pointless First Four. The first round has 16 games, so let’s spread
them out. ESPN has four channels that air live sports now – ESPN, ESPN2,
ESPNews and ESPNU. Let’s use all of them!
Do doubleheaders on each network on the first Tuesday and
Wednesday after Selection Sunday, first game starts at 7 p.m., second game
starts at 9:30 p.m. Run the scores across the top like it’s the NCAA
Tournament.
For the second round, which will be 8 games, you can again
do doubleheaders on Tuesday and Wednesday, with only the need to use ESPN and
ESPN2. It’s just like the NCAA’s Sweet 16.
As for the quarterfinals…
3) Invite 8 teams to
MSG
What do we really like about March Madness? Copious amounts
of basketball and daytime sports. During Championship Week, my Twitter feed is
overflowing when I check it at work with people watching random basketball
games. Throw in the availability
of streaming devices, the increasing number of people who work remotely,
college kids and you have an audience that is always ready to watch basketball.
My suggestion is to invite the 8 quarterfinalists to MSG and
treat it like a conference tournament. Play 4 games on a Tuesday, starting at
noon. Play 2 at night on Wednesday. Play the final on Thursday night.
The allure of the NIT is not half-empty campus gyms. It’s
the Mecca of college basketball. Take last the Clemson/Belmont game – how much
more would that have meant for Belmont if they were playing at Madison Square
Garden?
The change to the NIT that allowed regular season conference
champions into the field is great, and making a trip to NYC and MSG more manageable
is worth it.
4) The Winner Wins
More MSG
What do you get when you win the NIT? You get mockingly
referred to as the 65th-best, or 66th-best or now the 69th-best
team in the country. That’s not really good for your program.
Why does this work? For one, it helps the preseason NIT
solidify its field. As the last true preseason tournament left, the NIT needs
to find 4 “headline” teams and 12 other teams to fill out a 16-team bracket.
Unlike other preseason tournaments, those 4 headliners have to win 2 games just
to make it to NYC. It can be a tricky proposition. And since there are now
limits on preseason tournaments, the NIT has
struggled in recent years to build a decent field.
With this suggestion, 25% of the MSG field is taken care of.
And while Minnesota or Clemson may not be Kentucky or Indiana, it will give the
preseason tournament a nice storyline – the postseason champs “defending” their
title. For an up and coming program, like SMU, they could use the return trip
to vault itself into the national discussion. And for a mid-major, like
Belmont, an NIT title could turn the return trip into a chance to establish
itself as a potential Butler or Gonzaga.
The NIT champion needs to win more than mocking.
5) Create a Perfect Bracket
Game with a Great Prize
We all saw how well Warren Buffet’s Billion
Dollar Bracket game went. The contest generated a massive
amount of publicity for a prize that was never, ever, ever going to be won.
So why not create a contest that people could theoretically win?
It could be a million dollars. It could be a new car. It
could be a new house. ESPN needs to partner with a company, like Quicken Loans,
looking to get some publicity. There are 31 games in the NIT – picking all of
them correctly, like in the NCAA Tournament bracket, is probably impossible.
However, you have a much better shot. So use that slight possibility as a way
to entice sports fans to fill out another bracket.
Simple question – who doesn’t like filling out brackets?
It leads us back to the first Tuesday after Selection
Sunday, as four games are going on across ESPN and people are following their
other bracket, hoping they have cracked the code and are on their way to
winning $1 million or a new car.
The NIT is not a joke. It just needs some help. The
combination of college basketball, brackets and Madison Square Garden means
there’s hope.
Follow me on Twitter
InsaNITy made me laugh.
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