Looking on Fox Sports' Web site, I noticed a banner ad for something called the College Basketball Invitational, scheduled to start on March 18. Intrigued, I clicked on it (as you are welcome to do with my banner ads HINT HINT) and found this explanation:
"This event will feature 16 teams not playing in the 2008 NCAA Tournament and will secure an important opportunity for more deserving programs to have a postseason experience."
Don't we already have something like this called the NIT? Honestly, when you are the XFL in comparison to the freakin' NIT, you probably aren't that relevant. I can't really recall a lot of people saying "Yeah, the NCAA tournament is great, and I watch every NIT game, but I want more - if only there was another post-season tournament!"
Let's put it this way...after adding the College Basketball Invitational, there will be 113 teams involved in post-season play. That's out of a total of 341 Division I teams total. That means that almost one-third of all men's Division I teams will be playing in some form of the post-season this year.
But hey, it's good to know that those teams who were snubbed by the NIT will have a place to play in March. I'm sure they'll be extremely motivated.
3 comments:
I suppose if 60 football teams or so get invited to bowl games, why not over 100 basketball teams? It's torture...
While I agree with you that this is generally ridiculous, I would like to point out that the NIT-style tourney is especially beneficial to one group of schools - those who are in the process of reclassification to Division I. For their first four years in D1, those schools are ineligible for the NCAA tournaments, but they're welcome at the NIT.
My alma mater, South Dakota State, is in this boat - they're in their last year of reclassification, so they can't advance to the tourney, but the women's basketball team is really good, having just easily won their conference's regular season. Last year they were in a similar situation, and they were actually selling out Women's NIT games, with the Sioux Falls newspaper declaring "WNIT Fever" on the front of the sports section.
Are you sure it wasn't "We Knit Fever" and it was just a typo?
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