Stu’s Notes: The NIT TV Schedule Is Official

The NIT schedule is officially out, and while there are no surprises, a few good things:

• The Selection Show will be on ESPN2, not ESPNU.
• The NIT Championship will be on ESPN, not ESPN2.

We’re moving up in the world!

Full schedule:

• First Round: Tuesday, March 19^th and Wednesday, March 20^th
• Second Round: Saturday, March 23^rd and Sunday, March 24^th
• Quarterfinals: Tuesday, March 26^th and Wednesday, March 27^th
• Semifinals: Tuesday, April 2^nd at 7:00 PM EDT and 9:30 PM EDT.
• Championship: Thursday, April 4^th at 7:00 PM EDT.

It’s all getting so real.

When Will We Get an NIT Video Game?

EA Sports announced today that its much-anticipated college football video game will be returning this summer. Does this mean an NIT video game is in the works? We can only assume as much.

In all honesty, the thing holding us back from getting the NIT its own video game is not the NIT’s lack of popularity. It’s college basketball’s lack of popularity. The old EA Sports college basketball games were never as good as the football ones. Why? Because college basketball isn’t as popular, so there wasn’t as much reason to make a good product.

Why, you ask, is college basketball not as popular as college football? I think we know. I think we only need to look at the college basketball tournament which gets so much attention from the lamestream sports media to find our answer.

Abolish the NCAA T*urnament, and maybe our beloved sport will regain the popularity necessary to have its own video game.

Scott Boras Screws Over His Own Client? Shocking.

We’ve long talked on this website about how we think Scott Boras screws over his own clients in pursuit of embiggening his name. It’s not an argument we like to make, because it makes players sound dumb for signing with him, but we also feel like we should make it, in the hopes that the hundreds of professional baseball players who regularly read our blog (maybe there’s one or two—that’d be cool) take what we say to heart. Anyway, Lindsey Adler reported yesterday for the Wall Street Journal that Scott Boras is trying to push Blake Snell on teams rather than talk to them about the guy they want, Jordan Montgomery:

Meanwhile, Snell’s slow market has seemingly impacted Montgomery, a fellow 31-year-old left-hander. Montgomery, another Boras client, is the second-best remaining starter. He’s likely to command a lower price than Snell—his recent numbers are weaker—making him a more affordable option for a wider range of clubs.

Montgomery, who finished the 2023 season with the World Series winning Texas Rangers, appears to also have had his market impacted by the Rangers’ issues with their local television deal, which was finally resolved last week.

But he’s been a curious victim of the Boras bottleneck. Team officials who have spoken with Boras about his remaining free agent pitchers say that inquiries about Montgomery have largely been brushed aside by his agent in favor of discussing Snell.

Adler makes sure to clarify that this might be strategic on Boras’s part on behalf of Montgomery—that if Snell goes, teams will feel more desperate for Montgomery due to dwindling supply. She also shares comment from Boras saying he treats each player as an individual.

Even with that rebuttal, and with the explanation, though:

Wouldn’t you be a little concerned if you were Jordan Montgomery?

Why the Super Bowl Should Stay on Sunday

We’re into post-Super Bowl week, and with it the push from NFL fans and media to move the Super Bowl off of Sunday and onto Saturday, making it easier to be hungover the day after the Super Bowl.

Here’s the thing:

1. Not everybody loves the NFL.
2. Everybody is used to Super Bowl Sunday.
3. People usually don’t have things going on in the early evening hours of Sunday nights.

Would the Super Bowl be more enjoyable for the biggest NFL fans if it happened on a Saturday? Of course! But that’s not what drives decisions for these leagues. It’s about appealing to fans on the fence. People make plans on Saturdays. They don’t make plans on Sundays. Moving the Super Bowl to a Saturday would appeal to the NFL’s base, but it would hurt the event with swing voters.

Etc.

More NIT:

• Loved what we saw from Xavier last night, who’d been flirting with exiting our reach. Theirs is a narrow window to thread, but they continue to thread it.
• Very excited to see Northwestern play Rutgers this evening. Northwestern isn’t out of it, and as Rutgers has been asserting, neither are the Scarlet Knights.
• The defending champs host Memphis, and SMU’s at Tulane but I’m fearing we missed the Mardi Gras jerseys?
• Gonzaga has a chance to play their way back into relevance, visiting Loyola Marymount.
• The Pac-12 is busy, as it always is on Thursdays: Colorado at UCLA (yowza!). Stanford at Washington (yippee!). Utah at USC (cowabunga!!!!).

Chicago:

• Bulls lost. Kept it close, but that’s the kind of thing you say about a young team getting better, not a Bulls team being the Bulls.

Joe Kelly, and the Ottawa Senators:

• The Dodgers gave out Valentine’s Day cards to their players, and Joe Kelly was second in the proceedings. Shows how much of a leader he is. He let Mookie Betts go first.
• The Sens host the Ducks tonight, and Ottawa should be back to a full six defensemen after Artem Zub (known colloquially as Zub) missed Tuesday night’s game. Zub isn’t back yet, but they called up Max Guénette. That makes six.