I was making a delivery last week in West Campus while wearing a 32>68 shirt when a young man with long hair called out to me, “Hey! What does your shirt mean, dude?”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have a thirty-second explanation available as to why a particular tournament with 32 teams so outshines a particular tournament with 68 teams that the numbers themselves have been thrown from their natural alignment.
So, here we are. An explanatory blog post, with a conveniently short URL that I can hand out on paper slips to burgeoning NIT disciples. This, friend, is why 32>68:
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The first NIT was held in 1938. It was the premier college basketball tournament in all the land, and it remained this way even as the growing NCAA built up a tournament of its own, beginning a year later, in 1939.
For years, the natural hierarchy remained. The NIT was the best, the NCAA’s imitation was inferior. But the NCAA didn’t like it this way. No, in a shocking twist, the same institution known for its absent moral compass and its sterling reputation with fans of double standards was not comfortable with the truth. It needed its own tournament to be the best. And it tried to accomplish this by force.
In 1970, Al McGuire and Marquette’s legendary Apollo 11-commemorating team defied the growing racketeering efforts by the NCAA, opting to play in the NIT rather than the rapidly bloating tournament bearing the NCAA’s name. They won it. They made their stand. The NCAA was not pleased.
Following the season, the NCAA created a rule barring teams from participating in any postseason tournament if they’d turned down the NCAA’s own.
But the NCAA did not win.
Because the NCAA didn’t understand the NIT in the first place.
What made and makes the NIT great was not having the “best” teams. It was having the right ones. It was having the teams chosen by fate to craft the most perfect, unblemished college basketball tournament, regardless of quality of play. The NIT is not about good teams. It’s about what’s right.
The battle didn’t end after 1970. In 2005, the NCAA went so far as to buy the NIT in an attempt to squelch it, staring down a court decision that may have overturned the post-1970 rule while further penalizing the NCAA for inflating its own tournament to 65 teams in an effort to further steal from the NIT’s preferred teams.
But again, the NIT would not be stopped.
Today, the NIT enjoys the fandom of a certain breed of college basketball connoisseur. Entire websites are devoted to it (in addition to The Barking Crow, we also have a site named All Things NIT that’s still out there in the ether). Because it currently stands at 32 teams, rather than the even-more-swollen 68 weighing down the NCAA’s attempted coup of a tournament, we know our simple truth: 32 is greater than 68. And now you know it too.
If you’re confronted about your belief, don’t feel the need to argue for long. State your case, and move on. Not everyone is ready just yet to be converted, and that’s ok. The NIT’s plans are not those of man.
Beyond giving them this URL, though, remind them of this:
- A 32-team tournament is, by definition, more selective than a 68-team tournament.
- The NIT is the model for all single-elimination tournaments, and is therefore, in a way, the mother of all sport.
- The NCAA keeps trying to kill the NIT. Why?
- It’s about the right teams. Not the best teams. Ask Herb Brooks how this turned out in Miracle.
- It’s more difficult to make a tournament when the selection criteria is more nuanced than the barbaric, “Who are the best teams?” Challenging. Intricate. Sophisticated. Such is the way of the NIT.
- The NIT is the only postseason tournament to bridge the gap between the common man and the stars, beginning on the humble home courts of its aspirants before culminating in Madison Square Garden.
- Again, two entire websites devoted to the NIT.
Good luck. Stay in touch, and let us know what you need.
Welcome to the faith.
