The haters tried to stop us. They said, “Does anyone even care about the NIT?”
We said yes.
We will keep saying yes.
We will continue to love the NIT.
Our NIT Bracket Challenge is back for the eighth straight year. Last year, we had 819 entries. Is this the year we break one thousand? Is this the year we go back to five, the number we had in 2017 when we started an NIT pool as a joke, unaware that the NIT would eventually consume our lives? There is no way to know but to proceed with the challenge. So, proceed with the challenge we shall.
The link to submit is below, but first, some ground rules:
- 1 point for every team correctly picked to advance to the second round.
- 2 points for every team correctly picked to advance to the quarterfinals.
- 4 points for every team correctly picked to advance to the final four.
- 8 points for every team correctly picked to advance to the championship.
- 16 points for correctly picking the champion.
- There will only be one tiebreaker again this year. We are sad to not bring back the frozen pizza tiebreaker from 2022, but NIT Stu is still technically obese (BMI is a hater), so that feels like a bad idea. Instead, in appreciation of the dudes with that dog in ‘em, we’re asking you to guess the NIT’s leading rebounder. Any relevant ties will be broken by whoever’s chosen board man pulls down the most missed shots.
- All decisions by The Barking Crow regarding scoring and tiebreakers are final, and by joining this challenge, you agree to this.
- The winner, runner-up, and third-place finisher will receive prizes of decreasing value. The prizes are negotiable, but we hold final say. Past winners have been awarded combinations of merchandise, future NIT ticket options, and gift cards to storied American eateries. (It turned out Sbarro doesn’t have gift cards. Although…that was six years ago. Maybe they have them now??)
- All brackets must be received before the first game of the tournament tips off (Tuesday 3/19, 7:00 PM EDT).
- One entry per email address.
The link!
Here’s the link to submit your entry.
Here’s a link to the bracket, which might be helpful because our submission mechanism remains a clunky Google Form. (If we get enough entries this year, we should be able to have a better submission software next year.)
Scoreboards will be posted at some point Tuesday NITe on this page.
