If you root for one of the 282 Division I men’s basketball programs that play outside a power six (for now) conference — or just have a soft spot for the little guy going against The Machine — this weeks marks the beginning of one of the few collective experiences remaining in American life.
For the next 17 weeks, we’ll strike that weird balancing act of fully investing ourselves in every game our team plays while also understanding the season comes down to a few days at the conference tournament in March. This seems bizarre to anyone who doesn’t follow sports — or worse yet, anyone who roots for one of the 80 programs that play in a power six (for now) conference and thus just has to be mediocre for most of the next four months to ensure it gets play meaningful games in March.
But savoring the smaller regular season moments is such a unique part of the experience because all of us — from the fresh-faced college kids hitting campus for the first time to middle-aged fans grizzled by reality — understand the opportunity to enjoy the biggest moment of all and get a taste of that elusive euphoria requires a combination of skill and good fortune that eludes most teams at our level.
Beginning this week, we’ll need to savor those regular season moments even more. Because pretty soon, they’ll be all we have.
The NCAA put the dump into Friday news dump on Oct. 27, when it announced a nobody-asked-for-this overhaul of the NIT. The top two non-NCAA Tournament teams in each of the power six (for now) conferences will receive automatic bids to the NIT, which did away with awarding automatic bids to the regular season champions of the 26 mid-major leagues. The 12 automatic bids will also host a first-round game.
Under the new rules, last year’s NIT would have featured the likes of 16-16 Texas Tech and 16-19 Ohio State. It also would have featured Washington State (17-16), Florida (16-16) and Rutgers (19-14), all of whom got in under the old rules, all of whom got a first-round home game and all of whom lost. You might remember the Rutgers game!
NCAA senior vice president of basketball — that’s a mouthful to say he does nothing — Dan Gavitt said last Wednesday the changes were made because the NIT is facing an existential crisis in the form of Fox’s plans to help found a 16-team tournament — consisting of non-NCAA Tournament teams from the Big East, Big 10 and Big 12 — that would take place in Las Vegas starting in 2025. The NIT’s broadcast deal with ESPN expires next spring.
But power conference teams already don’t want to play in anything that’s not the NCAA Tournament, The NIT has been derisively nicknamed the “Not Invited Tournament” for as long as I can remember, which is a really long time. Why is the big boogeyman that is the Fox tournament (Fox selling boogeymen? In this economy?) going to be any more appealing to programs loaded with players disappointed to have missed out on the big dance and already turning their focus to professional opportunities or the portal?
Calling this a “wag the dog” moment would give the NCAA too much credit for foresight it’s never possessed. But it does feel like the inevitable next step in destroying the NCAA Tournament as we know it by both expanding it and turning it into an event only — or almost entirely only — for power conferences.
Gavitt said that the overhaul of the NIT shouldn’t be interpreted as a test run for similarly gutting the NCAA Tournament. He also said the men’s basketball committee has only spent a “brief time” pondering the “expansion of the NCAA tournament field” and that if the tournament expanded, “…the thought would be there would be more at-large opportunities for all 32 conferences.”
To borrow a line from White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf: How do you know when Dan Gavitt is lying? When you see his lips move.
There’s nearly two decades worth of evidence that there will never be more at-large opportunities for ALL 32 conferences. When George Mason (grr) made the Final Four in 2006, the Patriots were one of eight mid-majors to receive an at-large bid, a number the mids didn’t match again until 2010. A modern record 11 at-larges mid-majors made the field in 2012, followed by 10 in 2013.
But over the last nine tournaments (a reminder the 2020 tournament was won by Hofstra and you can’t convince me otherwise), the 53 at-large bids for non-power conferences have been concentrated within six leagues. The Atlantic 10, Mountain West, West Coast Conference, Missouri Valley and the post-UConn American have combined for 52 of those spots. Only Belmont, from the Ohio Valley in 2019, crashed the party from another league.
If/when the NIT is euthanized next spring, the NCAA can spin the expansion of the tournament to 96 or beyond as simply saying it’s simply adding the teams that would have made the NIT. And when all those teams are major conference teams, well, what can you do? The NIT is now mostly made up of major conference teams!
The problem, from the NCAA’s perspective, is even an expansion to 96 teams might not slow the momentum the mid-majors have established over the last 17 tournaments.
George Mason (grr) was, of course, the first mid-major in the 64-team NCAA Tournament era to reach the Final Four. VCU followed five years later, making the CAA the only true mid-major league (sorry, American) to send two different schools to the Final Four.
The previously unthinkable has been happening with increasing regularity over the last 10 tournaments. Florida Gulf Coast (2013) and Oral Roberts (2021) became the first teams seeded 15th to reach the Sweet 16 before Saint Peter’s made it all the way to the Elite Eight in 2022. Princeton became the fourth no. 15 seed to reach the Sweet Sixteen last season.
UMBC became the first no. 16 seed to topple a no. 1 seed when the Retrievers routed Virginia in 2018. Last March, Fairleigh Dickinson became the first no. 16 seed to win two games when the Knights beat Texas Southern in a play-in game before upsetting Purdue two nights later. Fairleigh Dickinson led another mid-major, Final Four-bound Florida Atlantic, by five points almost halfway through the second half in a round of 32 game, which means, under the current tournament structure, we can’t be too far away from a 16 seed reaching the Sweet 16.
The NCAA doesn’t want this to happen, but it might even if every power conference team with a .500 or better record gets into the tournament. There were only 59 of those teams last season, which leaves 37 bids, 27 of which would be awarded to the winners of the non-power leagues. You think the selection committee wants to start giving double-digit at-large bids to schools outside the power six (for now) now?
The only way to ensure the mid-majors don’t crash the party is to ensure they aren’t invited. I don’t know how the NCAA is going to pull this off, only that they’ll do it at some point. And once it happens, power conference teams can fill their non-league slates with games against fellow power conference teams and not even bother running the risk of an embarrassing November or December loss.
So we need to enjoy not only the Cinderella moments in March, but the Cinderella moments in November enjoyed this week by Abilene Christian (over Oklahoma State), Presbyterian (over Vanderbilt), Purdue Fort Wayne (over DePaul, albeit a power conference school in name and history only), our old pals James Madison (over Michigan State) and, especially, Princeton (over Rutgers).
At least Rutgers doesn’t have to worry about losing to Hofstra or Princeton in the NIT in March! Or, soon enough, ever again, anywhere, at any time.
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