How Many NIT Championships Every School Has Won

One of my favorite things to do this time of year is tell people Duke’s never won a national championship. This is true. The NIT champion is the national champion. The NIT is more historic and selective than the NCAA T*urnament, and unlike the NCAA T*urnament, it didn’t start the same year Hitler invaded Poland. Most people don’t know this, though, so they try to argue with me. That’s when I sit them down and teach them about college basketball, making sure to use the smallest words I know.

If you’re looking to do this today, you can do it with a number of teams playing NCAA T*urnament games. Most notable is Duke, but you can also do Arizona, Michigan State, and even Oregon—provided you are talking to an Oregon fan. Nobody else knows or cares who won the NCAA T*urnament in 1939. They were all more worried about Hitler.

In related news (related to Hitler, because whoever did this is sick in the head), someone took the “Total NIT Championships” page off of Wikipedia. Thankfully, this allows us to put St. John’s, Minnesota, and Michigan’s vacated titles back into the internet’s list of record. We aren’t passing judgment on whatever they did. It’s just easier to include those championships in the list.