The NIT is perfect as it is. A 32-team single-elimination bracket with the first three rounds at regional sites and the Final Four at the best neutral court in the world? That’s college basketball at its finest. That said, it’s always good to look at the next best thing, especially in case those fond of change come calling.
We don’t recommend changing the NIT. We can’t overemphasize that. And even in this next-best option, we don’t think switching from 32 teams is a good idea. You just dilute the quality too much. Additionally, the current calendar—start the tournament the Tuesday after Selection Sunday, finish the tournament 16 days later—is perfect. Can often keep the whole thing in March that way, can often have the championship on Opening Day that way, just a great sporting event, through and through. Finally, you need to have a single-elimination bracket. That’s essential for a tournament. (Remember this year’s The Basketball Classic? No? Well, it had no bracket and it quickly became unsightly.) But that doesn’t necessarily have to come at the beginning. Our suggestion:
For the first stage of the NIT, group teams geographically into sets of four, then schedule each team to play one home game and one road game within that grouping. For example: If a group of four teams consisted of Florida Gulf Coast, Florida State, Georgia State, and UAB, you’d have FGCU visit FSU while Georgia State visits UAB, then make UAB visit FGCU while FSU visited Georgia State.
Why do this? Well, part of the draw of the NIT is having postseason games on home courts, and part of the challenge of the NIT is having postseason games on road courts. This is good for fans and competition but it’s also nice for revenue. There is no bigger boost to a local economy than hosting an NIT game. Why do you think New York City became such an economic hub during all those decades the NIT Final Four was there?
Out of each group, two of the four teams advance. How to determine who those teams are? If a team wins two games, they move on. If you need a tiebreaker (it is evidently too late in the afternoon for me to actually game this out, but I think you can always use head-to-head if there are two teams and you’ll always have to use original seeding if there’s four teams), go by head-to-head results, whether a team won its road game, and then original seeding. I’m pretty sure that with this and some proactive scheduling of tip-off times, you can make sure every game counts for every team.
From there, you have a sixteen-team bracket, which does add length to the tournament. But here’s where it stays fun: You’ve got a new geographic group of four teams for the 8th-finals and quarterfinals. Say UAB and Florida State advanced out of their group while Murray State and Kentucky (dare to dream) advanced out of the next group north. These four go to their corner of the bracket, with all three games played on the court of the highest-seeded among them. After this, you’ve got your Final Four, which can either be played on the home court of the defending champion, back at Madison Square Garden, at a new arena I build in New York that’s even cooler than Madison Square Garden, or on the moon (but with gravity adjusted so the game doesn’t turn into a joke).
Again, all unnecessary changes. We aren’t trying to shake things up at all with the NIT. It is wonderful as it is. But if people are going to try to change, this makes more sense than expanding to 64 teams, moving the Final Four to a weekend, and/or getting rid of the extended-bracket piece of the competition. We want this to firmly be the next option up. Then, we want everyone to look at it, say, “Nah,” and keep things the way they are, just with James Dolan out of MSG and the NIT back in.
