We haven’t written about college basketball much lately, and we aren’t going to do it here. A few thoughts, though, so you know where our takes are at (these are my takes, please do not blame Joe for my takes):
- South Carolina has the NIT look.
- Michigan should keep Juwan Howard until they make the NIT, then fire him and have Phil Martelli coach them to victory.
- Indiana is still perfect but I’m nervous about Friday. Not sure which outcome would be bad for their NIT dreams (i.e., my NIT dreams for them), but I’m nervous either way.
- I’m glad the men’s game hasn’t gone to quarters yet and I hope it never does.
- Colin Porter would start World War 3 if he walked on at Duke in the Coach K era.
- I’m not sure McNeese has been playing accredited institutions, which is a scary sign. You would think it would take longer than that for everyone in the athletic department to start thinking like Will Wade.
- Shaka Smart rules, and I just hope Texas doesn’t lose tomorrow before the world gets to see them play him next week.
- Wisconsin went from dead to alive faster than Damar Hamlin. Is this how the real grim reaper felt when that happened?
- FAU might be too well-liked to make the NIT.
- I think there’s a joke to be made off of the Ivy League being good and highly educated/very online folks loving the NBA. I can’t find it yet, though.
- If DePaul stopped existing, how early would people notice? Would they notice? Or would the name DePaul sound like one of those alleged football teams from the 1920s. Sewanee. Cumberland. DePaul.
Now.
Since I get asked this 48 times a day on the streets.
What a College Football NIT would look like.
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The thing you have to remember about the NIT is that the teams involved are not bad. They are quite good, actually. The worst at-large bid is usually better than about 80% of Division I men’s basketball teams. The best one is usually better than about 88% of them. And that’s just when the tournament starts! By the end, the best one is usually even better. (Don’t think about this too long. It’ll make sense but your brain will hurt.)
Applying that to the CFP committee’s penultimate* rankings, and adjusting for predictable nonsense:
*“Penultimate” is such a fun word. I’m going to start doing things in sequence just so I can have penultimates.
- The top seed in the FBS NIT would be Iowa. I’m serious. That’s 88%. We didn’t plan this. People say God doesn’t love the NIT, and then things like this happen? Anyway, Iowa: top seed.
- It would be a 12-team tournament (12 > 68). Notre Dame, Oklahoma State, and NC State would get the other byes. Oregon State would get hosed with a second-round matchup all the way in Raleigh. Tennessee would be involved (more evidence of a beneficent creator), and the other six teams would be Tulane (ooh), Clemson (yes!), Liberty (of course), Kansas State (yee-haw!), and then I’m assuming Toledo and Troy would get screwed and SMU and Kansas would take the last spots, possibly with SMU buying theirs.
- What we’d have then (I really shouldn’t be doing bulletpoints, but we’ve made it this far) would be Oregon State hosting KU (I think they’d be friends), Tennessee hosting SMU (I don’t think they’d be friends), Tulane hosting Kansas State (K-State people would love New Orleans), and Clemson hosting Liberty (best friends). Oregon State would roll through Kansas, Tennessee would choke against SMU, Kansas State would exact revenge upon Tulane, and Liberty fans would storm the field alongside Clemson fans after a Clemson victory (who doesn’t love to storm).
- Second round: Iowa’s defense would combine with the cold to make Cade Klubnik quit football. Notre Dame would frantically ask if this counted as a New Year’s Six bowl and then lose to K-State just in case. Mike Gundy’s Oklahoma State team would trail by 66 at the half but come back to win after a hole opened in the earth in Stillwater and swallowed a third of SMU’s roster, with a second third taken up in the night sky and the final third left to get trampled by Ollie Gordon. Oregon State would beat NC State, and we’d all have made way too much of the travel.
- Semifinals: I think Oregon State would beat Iowa. I think they’d have too much self-respect. Similarly, I think Kansas State would get Oklahoma State back.
And thus, we would have the most College Football NIT Championship imaginable: Oregon State vs. Kansas State. An absolutely perfect level of quality which is neither too high nor too low. Goldilocks’s football game. It would be played either at Notre Dame Stadium or at a JuCo outside of Phoenix*, and it would be beautiful.
They’re not bad teams, guys.
*I might be forgetting some details, but I’m pretty sure a guy from my high school made the JuCo national championship as a lineman, and that the championship was in Arizona and he told people it was at the Cardinals stadium back when that stadium was new, and then we saw the pictures on Facebook and it was just at a JuCo. Easier to high-five fans there, though. You can’t understate the value of high-fiving fans.
