Doyel: Desperate to save itself, NCAA used NIT to sell out 200 of its smallest schools
INDIANAPOLIS – The NCAA is greedy and gutless and deserves whatever happens to it someday, but because a complete rundown of reasons would fill this newspaper, let’s just stick to what the NCAA has done in recent days when it crushed schools like Towson and Nicholls to pander some more to the Power 5.
If you missed it, well, that was the NCAA’s hope. The NCAA admitted what it had done on Friday afternoon, what’s known in the communications industry as a “news dump.” A news dump happens when a gutless organization has done something ugly, but hopes most of us in the media — and most of you, in the real world — have a life and have checked out for the day. Then comes the weekend, and by Monday, whatever happened Friday is old news.
What did the NCAA do that was so ugly? You’ll have to put on your empathy hat to understand, because most folks don’t care about National Invitation Tournament or the way teams are invited. For example, did you know the NCAA operates the NIT? Did you know the 2024 NIT semifinals and title game will be held at Hinkle Fieldhouse?
Probably not, because who cares — and most years, I’m with you. The NIT’s move to Hinkle Fieldhouse came as news to me as I was reporting the story you’re reading now. Been here nine years and have gone to exactly, hmmmm, one NIT game. And only to urge Romeo Langford to stay in school in 2019.
Well, there also was that story in 2017, when IU turned down an invitation to host an NIT game, because Tom Crean had lost it and IU basketball fans were losing it and the school didn’t want a national television audience to hear Assembly Hall booing its coach. Not just to play in that tournament.
Because nobody cares about that tournament.
Doyel from 2017: Rejecting NIT home game is proof IU, Crean need a divorce
Doyel in 2019: He's gone, but Romeo Langford isn't ready for NBA
That doesn’t make it right, what the NCAA has done. And it damn sure doesn’t excuse the way the NCAA went about it, or the naked greed behind it. All of this is really disappointing, because in December the NCAA introduced a new president, former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker.
The last guy, Mark Emmert, not only stood in the way of college players being paid the pocket money that would’ve satisfied them, but had the gall to line the NCAA’s pockets off the players’ fame. Because of that, because Emmert’s NCAA was so hypocritical, dominoes started falling that led to the current NIL bidding wars that have turned the rest of college athletics into SEC football:
Professional sports, in other words.
That’s what the last guy, Emmert, did. The new guy? Baker? He’s the guy who just ticked off the NCAA’s last powerful friend — the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
All for the NIT.
And nobody even cares about that tournament.
NCAA must think you're stupid
The NCAA was slow to catch on, because for decades it was too busy eating grapes and fiddling on the White River while its future burned, but the NCAA finally understands what is happening:
When the biggest schools break away to keep all that College Football Playoff money, the NCAA will go out of business. That means all those pretty salaries for all those fancy folks at the NCAA’s office on the White River are in danger. And while the NCAA has never been brave enough to provide for its student-athletes or protect the integrity of its two biggest sports, now the NCAA has gone completely spineless.
That Friday news dump, see, was scheduled to hide the true cowardice of the news involved:
The NCAA hopes to use NIT bids to curry favor from a handful Power 5 schools, at the cost of its 200 smallest schools. It’s like this:
Used to be, conference regular-season champions earned an automatic bid into the NIT, assuming they didn’t qualify for the NCAA tournament. Seeing how most of the NCAA’s 32 conferences are what we call “one-bid leagues,” that means most conferences have been playing for more than that magical, miracle shot at One Shining Moment. The regular season mattered for leagues like the MAAC and Horizon and Ohio Valley. Finish atop the league standings, and you were going at least to the NIT.
Not anymore. The NCAA announced Friday: “Conference regular-season champions that do not win their conference tournament or are not otherwise selected to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship will not receive an automatic bid to the NIT.”
It gets worse.
“Instead,” the announcement continued, “the NIT will guarantee two teams (based on the NET rankings) from each of six conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern).”
Technically, according to the press release, the announcement was made by the “NIT Board of Managers.” See, the NCAA wants you to think it wasn’t them. The NIT did this!
The NCAA hopes you don’t realize the NCAA runs the NIT.
Meanwhile, the reason behind this move was buried at the bottom of the release. Second-to-last sentence:
“All NIT games can be found exclusively on ESPN platforms.”
Follow the money. The trail is a gusher, pouring directly from ESPN to the largest conferences, with some trickling down the White River to the NCAA offices at 700 West Washington St.
The people running the NCAA, bless their greedy little hearts, are catching it with the biggest spoons they can find. Before it’s gone.
NABC is furious about NIT change
The NCAA didn’t tell the NABC it was changing the way the NIT picks teams. Didn’t even ask the NABC for advice, and you know why: The NABC would’ve cautioned against it, because this tweak is in the best interest only of ESPN.
So the NCAA did this behind the NABC's back.
NABC president Craig Robinson, the former coach at Brown and Oregon State, sent his membership a dismayed email Friday, which a handful of coaches shared with me. Here are some excerpts, and note how Robinson never mentions the “NIT Board of Managers,” probably for the same reason he didn’t mention Bigfoot, the Easter Bunny or Taylor Swift. None of them had a thing to do with this, either.
“We are greatly troubled that the NCAA made no effort to solicit feedback from the NABC’s various coaching committees when evaluating changes that will alter the landscape of the sport’s postseason,” Robinson wrote. “The NABC has spent years advocating for the need to include coaches at the table when significant decisions like this are made. Regrettably, NCAA administrators chose not to include coaches in the process.”
Said MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher in a statement: “To make such a substantive change to the NIT structure without providing a satisfactory explanation or building the foundations of such a change is troubling.”
Coaches from all levels of college basketball shared their thoughts with me anonymously. Some highlights:
“A lot of teams from non-Power 5 conferences take a lot of pride in playing in the NIT,” said a coach at a preseason AP Top 10 team. “And a lot of Power 5s take no pride in playing in the NIT — so it’s gotta be about (TV) money.”
Indeed, here are some high-major college basketball schools that have turned down NIT invites since 2021: Duke, North Carolina, Louisville, Texas Tech, Dayton, Louisville, St. John’s, Xavier and Seton Hall. And here are schools that earned their first NIT spots in that time, all by automatic bids that are now gone: Youngstown State, Morehead State, North Texas, Towson, Nicholls, Texas State.
“I’m upset they aren’t allowing (smaller) conference champs to get an auto bid, because those teams are really good,” said an assistant from a 2023 Elite Eight school. “Can’t imagine the NIT inviting the ninth- or tenth-place SEC team over them.”
Said a head coach with experience in the Big Ten and at multiple mid-majors: “It’s a really bad deal and shortsighted. Certainly looks like more steps toward eliminating the smaller schools/conferences. It also looks like they think they can appease football in some way — not happening — and keep the big boys from pulling out of the NCAA if they make these types of moves.”
Historically the NCAA has failed to anticipate the unintended consequences of new legislation. Here’s one such consequence of this one, according to coaches who would know: This NIT rule will lead to the elimination of conference tournaments in some one-bid leagues. If those conferences are guaranteed just one team in the NCAA and NIT tournaments combined, then let that team go straight to the NCAA tournament, where victory helps fund athletic departments around the league. Conference tournaments at that level aren’t profitable, anyway.
“AD’s are talking about it already,” said one coach with Big Ten and ACC experience, thinking of smaller leagues. “It’ll ruin their atmosphere of March, and destroy the regular season for most.”
Said another, a coach with experience in the Big Ten and Missouri Valley: “It’s 100% a complete joke. No sense of doing the right thing or what’s best for the student-athletes. All about the money.”
To that last coach, I sent the following reply:
The NCAA deserves to fall apart.
His response: “Oh it’s gonna happen. Money is king.”
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Gutless, greedy NCAA is canceling NIT automatic bids to save itself
