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Jeff Borzello, ESPN Staff Writer
The recent changes to the postseason NIT were made in direct response to a new postseason tournament expected to begin as early as 2025, leaving the future of the 85-year-old tournament at risk.
“The very viability of the event could be in jeopardy,” NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said Wednesday.
Last week, the NIT board of managers announced that regular-season champions who do not win their conference tournaments and are not selected for the NCAA tournament will not receive an automatic bid to the NIT. Instead, the NIT will guarantee bids for two teams from each of the six power conferences as well as two spots for the top two teams in the NET rankings that were not selected for the NCAA tournament.
The changes were met with criticism from mid-major conference commissioners and head coaches.
Gavitt said Wednesday the changes were necessary in order to compete with the new postseason tournament in the works.
“The NIT has a new, credible and imminent challenge in the competitive postseason space. Every indication is that a new postseason event is planned to start in 2025,” Gavitt said. “The event is well-organized, imagined and funded with a competitive broadcast component and location.
“As a result of all that, we believe we needed to change and evolve the NIT to compete with the best available teams and conferences, given new postseason opportunities that are presented to them. The changes are a preemptive attempt to keep the NIT viable long-term, frankly.”
Gavitt was referring to a new tournament featuring the top 16 teams from the Big East, Big Ten and Big 12 that didn’t make the NCAA tournament. The Messenger reported in September that Fox Sports is behind the event, which would be played at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
“It’s really been a luxury that we’ve been operating the tournament in a low competitive environment,” Gavitt said. “And that scenario is now changing.”
“I can tell you unequivocally, this event was going to happen in 2024,” he added. “This is not an imagined challenge.”
Gavitt also addressed concerns that the changes to the NIT were a precursor to the NCAA tournament making similar changes — more power-conference teams, fewer mid-majors — saying those fears were not “justified.”
“The events are managed by very different groups, with very different realities, in a competitive marketplace,” Gavitt said. “There should not be any connection that’s drawn. In no time in the brief time the men’s basketball committee has discussed expansion of the NCAA tournament field, has anything even remotely close to this topic or this way of considering how to run a tournament been considered.
“We have automatic qualifiers from 32 conferences currently; in the NCAA championship, we have 36 at-large spots. Should the tournament expand, the thought would be there would be more at-large opportunities for all 32 conferences.”