I should be clear about something before I start this: I don’t speak for the NIT. I don’t even know how that would work, since the NIT isn’t a person or a group of people. I also don’t speak for college basketball fans as a whole, or for those who work in the college basketball industry. I’m one of the bigger NIT fans in the world, but it’s possible I’m not even the biggest. When I talk about “the state of the NIT,” it’s just my opinion. I’ve followed the NIT closer than almost anyone over the last ten years. I love the NIT and I want it to thrive. People have a lot of opinions about the NIT. Hopefully my perspective is helpful.
It’s common to underestimate how chaotic college sports have always been. Conference realignment is described as a recent phenomenon, but it’s always happened, at the high-major level and at a large scale. At least some players have always received paychecks, at varying levels, and at similarly varying levels they’ve always received solicitations from gamblers to shave points and rig games. The pace of change has been fast these last few years. Revenue share and free transferring are genuinely new. There’s also less shame from those trying to wring every TV dollar they can out of college basketball and college football over the next ten years with no care for where that leaves these sports in the next generation. But college sports have always been changing, and the NIT in particular has always existed in a state of flux.
The NIT started in 1938. By 1939, the NCAA Tournament was trying to compete with it, and over the decades that followed, things occasionally got ugly. In 1970, Al McGuire scorned the NCAA over complaints regarding Marquette’s placement in the bracket, leading to a heavy-handed NCAA crackdown which eventually caused an antitrust lawsuit. Only in the 1990’s did the NCAA Tournament start approaching the popularity it currently enjoys, with bracket pools nonexistent in the 70’s and far from ubiquitous even when that tournament first reached its 64-team norm in 1985. College basketball was always a big deal. Its postseason has always been more transitory.
When people say the NIT “isn’t what it used to be,” they’re correct. At the same time, though, it didn’t used to be what it used to be. 1938 was different from 1939. The 1940’s were different from the 1950’s, which were different from the 60’s. Just as you can tell when someone started following college football by whether they say “Pac-8” or “Pac-10” or “Pac-12,” or whether they think of Penn State as independent or a Big Ten cornerstone, you can tell when someone became a college basketball fan by what they consider normal for the National Invitation Tournament. Even if the seeming majority of college basketball fans got their wish and we returned to a world with a 64-team NCAA Tournament, the NIT’s “natural” format would be hard to identify. In the 90’s, ESPN played a big role in tournament selection and schools had to cover a lot of their own expenses. With the NCAA takeover which came out of that antitrust suit, automatic bids entered the picture and the NIT’s treatment of its teams became comparably comfortable to the NCAA Tournament’s.
The relevant questions, to me, are what to make of the present NIT and what to make of the future NIT.
In the present, the NIT is a mid-major lover’s dream. Chattanooga vs. UC Irvine for the 2025 NIT Championship made waves for that particular type of basketball diehard. This year, there’s a more prominent power conference presence thanks to Auburn, but it’s still a heavily mid-major field. UNC made opt-outs look like an option. A blunder with transfer portal timing (since fixed) made them common. The introduction of the College Basketball Crown made them normal. In a Crown-less world, Seton Hall might have played in the NIT, but a fretful Big East commissioner’s office is holding onto Fox Sports for dear life, leaving teams like Seton Hall contractually obligated to play in the Crown unless they manage to wriggle out of the deal, which Seton Hall reportedly did. Even with that wriggling, they’re especially contractually obligated to not play in the NIT.
Opt-outs have had a mixed effect on the NIT. On the positive side, the teams resemble the most romanticized version of the sport. There’s no longer much question over whether teams will play hard. If they want to play, they’re playing. The proverbial “used car salesman” coach always opts out now, selling his administration on the idea that it’s not him who’s the problem, but the transfers he recruited, and that if he can just recruit new transfers, the program will be fine. The last two NIT Final Fours have featured eight of the higher-character coaches in college basketball, with programs shaped in their image. Meanwhile, those who dislike NIL (I’m not an anti-NIL guy myself) can find some comfort in low-salary players who really are going to go pro in something other than sports.
On the negative side, you don’t get the David vs. Goliath for which college basketball is currently known. Kentucky doesn’t play Robert Morris in this present version of the NIT. It’s David vs. David now. There’s also less attention paid to the tournament from the broader sports world. I’m going to hazard a guess that ratings were poorer for San Jose State vs. Loyola Chicago last year than they were for Mississippi State vs. Nebraska back in 2018. Ratings aren’t everything, and they have a bigger impact on the future NIT than the current NIT, but they reflect a broader lack of interest. If fans really get into the NIT these days, they often enjoy the product more than they did ten years ago. But it’s harder to get into the NIT when you don’t know much about the teams involved, and when sports media as an industry is giving the tournament less oxygen. Less interest isn’t universally a bad thing (you probably don’t care how popular your favorite band is), but the NIT’s at its best when crowds are large and there’s a lot of public anticipation.
The oxygen problem is exacerbated by Fox Sports, which is the second-biggest media player in college sports and is actively trying to depose the NIT with the Crown. By all indications, the Crown is a failed enterprise which will soon go the way of the dodo. Last year’s championship was on network television and featured the Nebraska Cornhuskers, yet drew fewer viewers than the 2024 NIT Championship did, on cable, on a night where the Indiana State Sycamores were the marquee draw. Do you know how hard it is to get Nebraska fans to not watch Nebraska on network TV? Similarly, attendance hasn’t always been the NIT’s strong suit, but last year’s Crown looked like it was played during Covid. Do you know how hard it is to get Nebraska fans to not travel to watch their team?
Still, Fox Sports is big, and it has its hands in a lot of places. Its close relationship with Barstool Sports has led to a relative abundance of Crown content in new media. Its status as a potential future employer for reporters and broadcasters has led many in the industry to pay it lip service, willing to look silly for the sake of fostering some professional relationship. ESPN’s deal with the NIT is different from Fox’s with the Crown. ESPN broadcasts the NIT. Fox runs the Crown. One specific Fox Sports executive vice president has plastered his name on every Crown-related press release. No one at ESPN has a personal stake in the NIT. With March already dominated by the NCAA Tournament, there already isn’t much space left for the NIT in the sports attention ecosystem. The space is small enough that a Fox Sports executive’s disastrous vanity project really can take up a significant share of the room.
What most NIT fans want, I think, is a world where the basketball players play hard and the tournament receives an appropriate amount of attention. We got this in 2024, largely thanks to Robbie Avila making Indiana State iconic. Last year, we got the romantic basketball, but it happened in a dimmer spotlight. This year could go a variety of directions. I don’t think it’ll be 2024 again, but Auburn’s presence is different from those of the 2025 high-major participants. The games at least figure to be a lot closer than the NCAA Tournament’s in the early rounds, which has been another great development these last few years.
One positive factor in the attention war is that the NIT Championship is moving this season from Thursday night to Sunday night, with the NCAA incorporating it into the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four weekend since both Final Fours are in Indianapolis. It’ll be played at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the Pacers’ arena, as the culmination of a one-day, three-game festival including the Division II and Division III national championships. It looks likely that more people in the college basketball industry—media and coaches and the rest who attend the Final Four as a sort of annual college basketball convention—will attend than ever before. That said, there’s always an element of “who knows” to this. The 2026 NIT’s shape will be determined by the teams who win games. If Dayton makes the championship, its fanbase might travel pretty well across the state line. If Auburn makes the championship, there’ll be more ESPN attention than usual. There are an abundance of fun mid-majors in this year’s field, but some are more fun than others. There’s no 2024 Indiana State. That was special.
Pivoting to the future…
The future of the NIT is, of course, uncertain. The NIT is packaged as a broadcast property with all the other NCAA championships, from FCS football to the women’s NCAA Tournament to the College World Series, Frozen Four, and volleyball. My impression is that it holds its own within that space, and that ratings remain good enough for both ESPN and the NCAA to find some value in it. I believe the relevant contract runs through 2032. For the time being, the NIT doesn’t seem to be in any serious existential danger. That’s a low bar, though.
Three years ago, the prospect of NCAA Tournament expansion looked ominous. With the opt-out situation what it’s become, it no longer seems like it would affect the NIT’s status much at all. I do have a personal dream that should the NCAA Tournament expand to 76 teams, the NCAA will make the NIT the destination for teams who lose in those Tuesday–Wednesday play-in games. This isn’t an original idea. Many have proposed it. It would benefit everybody, from the NIT to play-in losers, a group which this year could include Miami–Ohio, a team who does have some 2024 Indiana State similarities.
An expanded and play-in-integrated NIT could look like the following:
- First Round: 40 teams
- Second Round: 32 teams—12 NCAA Tournament play-in losers plus 20 NIT First Round winners
- Third Round: 16 teams, played the Tuesday & Wednesday when the quarterfinals are held this year
- Quarterfinals: 8 teams, played the Monday & Tuesday leading into Final Four weekend
- Semifinals: 4 teams, played the Thursday leading into Final Four weekend
- Championship: 2 teams, played on the Sunday of Final Four weekend
This is hugely unlikely to happen. It would require more money and work on the NCAA’s part with no immediate TV revenue payout at a time of year when all NCAA hands are on deck to administer all kinds of basketball. There would be opt-out questions for those play-in losers, whom the NCAA would basically have to require to play in the NIT at a time when the NCAA’s struggling to require colleges to do virtually anything. There’s an NCAA rule right now against playing in multiple postseason tournaments, a product of the NCAA’s old wars with the NIT before the NCAA owned the NIT. With Fox Sports slobbering at the prospect of TV inventory and holding great sway over the Big East, Big 12, and Big Ten, that rule would have to be altered but not fully rescinded.
A guy can dream, and should a certain NIT blogger’s get–rich–quick scheme work out, I’m sure the NCAA will be hearing from him. (He’d also love to get at least those quarterfinals over to Madison Square Garden again, though he really does adore Hinkle Fieldhouse.)
More realistically, the flavor of the future NIT depends on college basketball culture. Will it ever become normal again for all invited teams to play in the NIT? The answer depends in part on transfer norms. A world with higher roster continuity increases the value of more practice and more single-elimination experience. It also strengthens the bonds within programs. A common refrain around the NIT Final Four is players and coaches appreciating the chance to spend a few more weeks together. It sounds cheesy, but it’s real. Teams are a special thing in life. They don’t last forever. If you got the chance to play five more games or work three more weeks alongside a team you loved, at work or in sports or in some other part of life, wouldn’t you take that opportunity?
There’s also the question of what happens around the Crown. It’s a good bet to die within the next few years, struggling to get teams last year, already cutting its size in half, and sitting extremely vulnerable to NCAA Tournament expansion. When it’s gone, will more Big Ten, Big 12, and Big East schools return to the NIT mix? In the meantime, will the ACC and SEC commissioner’s offices follow those three conference’s leads? The Big Ten, Big 12, and Big East commissioner’s offices have exerted mixes of public and private pressure on their schools to be “good business partners” with Fox and play in the Crown. Theoretically, the ACC and SEC could run a similar internal campaign on behalf of ESPN.
At the end of the day, the NIT is like the NCAA Tournament in one important way: While the teams, moments, and characters involved can make it especially great one year, it always has a baseline level of good that comes from being itself. It doesn’t matter which teams are involved. It doesn’t matter what else is going on in the world. Just as people set aside weekends for the NCAA Tournament no matter who makes the field or how exciting the basketball really is, the NIT is always the NIT, no matter its size or its format or who plays and who doesn’t. The thing about the NIT always changing is that it’s shown it can survive and thrive through all sorts of external opposition. I think we can expect it to continue that performance.
Now.
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