Let’s face it: no team likes playing in the postseason NIT. Sure, your program gets some additional exposure on ESPN should you make the Final Four of said tournament, but more often that not, the champion of the NIT is usually forgotten by the time the Final Four rolls around. Once upon a time, winning the NIT was a bigger deal than the NCAA until the NCAA tournament started allowing non-conference champions into the dance and the NIT essentially became a consolation tournament.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. In fact, it could become just as big as the NCAAs if the powers that be in the college hoops world were to take this idea and run with it. It’s based upon the English FA Cup, where every soccer club in England has a chance (though most have it only theoretically) to lift the big trophy come late May in Wembley Stadium in London. This season long tournament gives teams that might not have a shot at season long glory another shot at winning a trophy, and a similar tournament could work wonders for not only the postseason NIT, but for college basketball’s preseason tournaments.
Here’s how it goes: every Division One team would be entered into the mix, with the power conferences best teams being held back until the big preseason tournaments on Labor Day weekend. You start out with some match ups drawn at random from the smaller conferences and let them play in to the larger tournaments in, say, early November. You could have the tournaments either be on the higher seeded team’s home court or a neutral site. The winners then advance to the next stage, where they play the mid majors for the chance at a spot in the larger preseason tournaments in such places as Maui, Anchorage, Kansas City, and so on.
Then, after the dust is settled, thirty-two teams would be left alive in the NIT tournament. This is where two weekends could be set aside (one perhaps in late December or early January, one in mid-February) for the round of thirty-two and round of sixteen games. You throw all the teams into a hat and pick out the match ups, with some caveats (conference teams could not play each other unless you had too many to avoid it).
Finally, you get to the weekend after the Final Four, with Super Saturday, where a quadruple header at Madison Square Garden would be a ratings bonanza for ESPN. The semis the next day would be even larger, and the NIT championship would easily be the largest ratings winner in cable, even surpassing Monday Night Football. You set the eight match ups with a draw from the hat, so you never know which match ups you might get.
The great thing about the tournament is that it leave a chance for a team that couldn’t make the big dance to have one last shot at glory. It could give a team with a miserable regular season record a chance to stun the world and make a truly Cinderella run at postseason glory. It could also be a huge cap in a major program’s hat to win the NCAA-NIT double.
Of course, there are drawbacks, the big one being the additional games and the more fluid schedule. However, with some cooperation from the conferences, schedules can be adjusted to accommodate the NIT tournament. It could be massive, and could make March Madness even bigger than it already is.