In an era of college sports defined by movement in the pursuit of money — whether that’s players and coaches changing teams, teams changing conferences or conferences changing tv partners — it’s always nice to have a reminder that some people are still in it for the love of the sport.
It was hard to feel that way Sunday after seeing teams snubbed from the NCAA men’s basketball tournament decide to also opt out of the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), thus ending their seasons. Whatever their reasons, it was just another example of the sport itself not being enough reason to play, an idea that’s sadly been normalized so much that I never considered the potential benefits of a tournament that didn’t crown a national champion.
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As far as I had always been concerned, the NIT was nothing more than an acronym for “Not In Tournament,” and the teams involved were playing games that didn’t matter. Then, I heard ESPN analyst and former coach Tom Crean’s impassioned rant against the declined invitations, and he convinced me on one point.
Tom Crean goes off about college basketball teams declining invitations to the NIT. 🏀🔥
(h/t: @Matt_Fortuna) pic.twitter.com/0O9SpdO1GT
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 18, 2024
“Give your players and coaches a chance to keep coaching and playing, and don’t short change,” Crean said. “If a guy doesn’t want to play, go sit down. If a coach doesn’t want to coach, go recruit. But there’s gotta be enough people to put five, six, seven people on the floor and go play. Makes absolutely zero sense to me.”
Give your players and coaches a chance to keep coaching and playing. That’s a powerful line, because there will come a time when those players and coaches won’t be able to play and coach again, and all they’ll have is the memories of when they could. That’s especially the case for seniors who maybe went into Selection Sunday hoping for one last game, only for their teams to never show up on the big bracket.
Of course, these declined invitations don’t all happen in a vacuum. Every team’s situation is different, and some may have had valid reasons for opting out. The transfer portal opening Monday complicates things too. And I’m not going to sit here and act like I’ll miss a bunch of teams I wasn’t going to watch anyway. But that shouldn’t be the impetus for teams wanting to play.
The NIT may not carry the same prestige as it once did, but it does provide graduates a final chance to play. It gives underclassmen another development opportunity. It gives players and coaches more exposure. It’s not completely useless. It only seems that way when teams like St. John’s, Pittsburgh and Indiana decide it’s not worth their time. And that’s unfortunate, because for a lot of the student-athletes and coaches, it may be their last time.
