 The National Invitation Tournament (NIT) is a men's college basketball tournament operated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The association plays two tournaments each season. The first is played in November and is known as the NIT Season Tip-Off (formerly the Preseason NIT), and was founded in 1985. The second is a post-season tournament played in March, with its final rounds in New York City and Madison Square Garden, and was founded in 1938. In both common and official usage, "NIT" or "National Invitation Tournament" refers to the post-season tournament unless otherwise qualified. Both the pre- and post-season tournaments were operated by the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA) up until 2005, when they were purchased by the NCAA. Image File history File links NIT_Logo. ...
Sara Giauro shoots a three-point shot, FIBA Europe Cup for Women Finals 2005 For other uses, see Basketball (disambiguation). ...
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA, often pronounced N-C-Double-A or N-C-Two-A) is a voluntary association of about 1200 institutions, conferences, organizations and individuals that organizes the athletics programs of many colleges and universities in the United States. ...
The NIT Season Tip-Off is an annual college basketball tournament that takes place in November of each year, around the beginning of the season. ...
Nickname: The Big Apple Official website: City of New York Government Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Geographical characteristics Area Total 468. ...
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG, known colloquially simply as The Garden, has been the name of four arenas in New York City, United States. ...
2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
History The post-season tournament pre-dates the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship tournament by one year; in the tournaments' early years there was often some contention as to which champion was in fact the nation's best collegiate basketball team. Beginning in the 1960s, however, the NCAA tournament began to take control, relegating the NIT to its current consolation status, albeit gradually. As late as 1970, Coach Al McGuire of Marquette University, the 8th-ranked team in the final AP poll of the season, spurned an NCAA bid in protest of his team's placement in the Midwest Region, where his team would have to have played games further away from home than it would if it were in the Mideast Region. The team played the NIT instead, which they won. Such an action would be unthinkable today. A tournament is an organized competition in which many participants play each other in individual games. ...
The NCAA Mens Division I Basketball Championship is held each spring featuring 65 college basketball teams in the United States. ...
See also: 1969 in sports, other events of 1970, 1971 in sports and the list of years in sports. // Auto Racing Stock car racing: Pete Hamilton won the Daytona 500 NASCAR Championship - Bobby Isaac Indianapolis 500 - Al Unser, Sr. ...
Al McGuire was the coach who led the Marquette University Mens Basketball team from 1964-1977. ...
Marquette University is a private, coeducational, Jesuit, Roman Catholic university in the United States. ...
Associated Press logo The Associated Press, or AP, is an American news agency, the worlds largest such organization. ...
The men's tournament originally consisted of only 6 teams, which later expanded to 8 teams in 1941, 12 teams in 1949, 14 teams in 1965, 16 teams in 1968, 24 teams in 1979, 32 teams in 1980, and is currently 40 teams as of 2002.
Originated by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association in 1938, responsibility for administering the NIT was transferred two years later to local colleges, first known as the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Committee and in 1948, as the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA), which comprised representatives from the five New York City schools: Fordham University, Manhattan College, New York University, St. John's University and Wagner College. See also: 1937 in sports, other events of 1938, 1939 in sports and the list of years in sports. // Baseball World Series: New York Yankees defeat the Chicago Cubs, 4-0. ...
See also: 1947 in sports, 1949 in sports and the list of years in sports. Baseball January 29: Commissioner Happy Chandler fines the Yankees, Cubs, and Phillies $500 each for signing high school players. ...
Fordham University is a prestigious co-educational private university in New York City. ...
Manhattan College is a Catholic college in the Lasallian tradition in New York City. ...
New York University (NYU) is a major research university in New York City. ...
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Wagner College is a coeducational private college located on Staten Island in New York City. ...
Originally all of the men's teams qualifying for the tournament were invited to New York City and all games were played at Madison Square Garden. In recent years, given the tremendous expansion of the field at the same time as interest in collegiate sports in general has declined in the Metropolitan New York area as interest in professional sports has increased, and interest in the NIT has declined as it has been dismissed as "playing for 66th place", earlier rounds are now played on campus sites and only the semi-final and final rounds are held at the Garden. C. M. Newton, an NCAA consultant, former basketball coach and former University of Kentucky athletic director, who is part of the NIT selection committee, has stated that he would like to restore the quarterfinal round to the Garden were it to become feasible. The Universitätscampus Wien, Austria ( details) Campus (plural: campi) is Latin for field or open space. English gets the words camp and campus from this origin. ...
The University of Kentucky (also as UK or simply Kentucky) is a public, co-educational university located in Lexington, Kentucky. ...
Athletic director (more frequently, athletics director) is a position at many American colleges and universities, as well as in larger high schools and middle schools, which oversees the work of the coaches and related staff involved in intercollegiate or interscholastic athletic programs. ...
NCAA takes control In 2005, the NCAA purchased the NIT tournament from the MIBA for $56.5 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit, which had actually come to trial and was being argued until very shortly before the settlement was announced. The NIT alleged that compelling teams to accept invitations to the NCAA tournament even if they preferred to play in the NIT was an illegal use of the NCAA's powers, and to testify in its behalf had subpoenaed Texas Tech coach and well-known NCAA critic Bobby Knight to testify on its behalf. (This rule was instituted after Al McGuire's aforementioned snub in 1970.) In addition, it argued that the NCAA's expansion of its tournament to 65 teams was designed specifically to bankrupt the NIT. As part of the purchase of the NIT by the NCAA, the MIBA disbanded. Antitrust or competition laws are laws which seek to promote economic and business competition by prohibiting anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. ...
Texas Tech University is a Tier I research university located in Lubbock, Texas, established in 1923 originally as Texas Technological College. ...
Fiery college basketball coaching legend Bob Knight. ...
The stigma of the NIT So strong is the stigma of the post-season National Invitation Tournament as a consolation fixture that when teams with tenuous hopes of an NCAA Tournament berth lose away from home late in the season, opposing fans chant "N-I-T! N-I-T!" to taunt the players in the closing seconds. This is done regardless of whether the home team is headed for the NCAA Tournament or not. Irv Moss, a journalist for the Denver Post, once wrote of such a chant to a defeated team, "The three-letter word...was far more cutting than any four-letter word they could have hollered." source The Denver Post is a daily newspaper published in Denver, Colorado. ...
The phrase four-letter word refers to a set of English words written with four letters which are considered profane, including common popular or slang terms for excretory functions, sexual activity, and genitalia. ...
Since the post-season NIT consists of teams who failed to receive a berth in the NCAA Tournament, the NIT has been humorously nicknamed the "Not Invited Tournament". David Thompson, an All-American player from N.C. State, called the NIT "a loser's tournament" in 1975. N.C. State, which had been the previous year's NCAA champion, refused to play in the tournament that year, setting something of a precedent. In succeeding years, other teams such as Louisville, Georgia Tech, and Georgetown University have declined to play in the NIT when they did not make the NCAA tournament. David ONeil Thompson (born July 13, 1954 in Shelby, North Carolina) is an American professional basketball star who played for the Denver Nuggets of both the National Basketball Association (NBA) and American Basketball Association (ABA), as well as the Seattle SuperSonics. ...
An All-America team is a sports team composed of star players. ...
North Carolina State University at Raleigh is a public, coeducational, extensive research university located in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. ...
The University of Louisville (also known as U of L, Louisville, or the Ville) is a public, state-supported university located in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. It is mandated by Kentuckys General Assembly to be a Preeminent Metropolitan Research University. ...
Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is located in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. With over 16,000 students, Georgia Tech is one of four public research universities in the University System of Georgia. ...
Not to be confused with the University of Georgetown in Georgetown, Guyana or Georgetown College in Georgetown, KY. Georgetown University is a private university in the United States. ...
One such team was the University of Maryland; after being rejected by the NCAA selection committee in 2006, head coach Gary Williams announced that 19-11 Maryland would not go to the NIT, only to be told that the university had previously agreed to use Comcast Center as a venue for the NIT. The University of Maryland, College Park (also known as UM, UMD, or UMCP) is a public university located in College Park, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., USA. As the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland, the university is most often referred to as the University of Maryland...
Gary B. Williams (born March 4, 1945 in Collingswood, New Jersey, United States) is the current head coach of the University of Marylands Mens basketball team. ...
This article is about the arena. ...
For other teams, however, the NIT is perceived as a step up in a program climbing from mediocrity or obscurity, and the response is more enthusiastic.
It should be noted that the Preseason NIT carries no such stigma, and is one of many popular season-opening tournaments held every year around the country (alongside the Maui Invitational, the Great Alaska Shootout, et cetera). The Preseason NIT is an annual college basketball tournament that takes place in November of each year, around the beginning of the season. ...
The Maui Invitational is a preseason college basketball tournament that takes place in late November of each year, usually around Thanksgiving. ...
The Great Alaska Shootout are a annual college basketball tournament in Anchorage, Alaska that features colleges from all over the United States. ...
Selection process In the past, NIT teams were selected in consultation with ESPN, the television home of the NIT [1]. The goal of the NIT was to sustain the MIBA financially. Therefore, schools selected to play in the NIT were often mediocre major conference teams which had large television fan bases. The amount of fans attending games was also a factor. This is one reason why the University of New Mexico was invited virtually every year they had a winning season but failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament [2]. Seeding considerations and home field advantage included the number of fans willing to show up to each game. In an effort to maintain some quality, a rule saying that a team must have a .500 record to qualify for the NIT was imposed. This prevented ESPN from suggesting more mediocre major conference teams. ESPN (once an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American cable television network dedicated to broadcasting sports-related programming 24 hours a day. ...
The University of New Mexico (UNM) is a public university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. ...
The NCAA announced a revamped selection process starting with the 2006 tournament. The main highlights are:
- Teams are no longer required to have .500 or greater records to receive bids. This may have an effect on the last few teams invited. However, in 2006, all teams qualifying for the NIT had a record greater than .500.
- All teams that won regular-season conference championships but failed to earn NCAA tournament bids are guaranteed places in the NIT. Thus, more teams from the low-major conferences may qualify. (Mid-major regular season conference champions have traditionally been invited.)
In addition, the selection process has been made transparent. ESPN will no longer help select the teams. Instead, a committee of six former NCAA head coaches, C.M. Newton (Alabama), Dean Smith (North Carolina), Don DeVoe (Tennessee), Reggie Minton, John Powers and Carroll Williams, prepared a list of potential teams in advance. The seeding and balancing process is similar to that of the NCAA tournament, with the exception that higher seeded teams will always host games, unless extenuating circumstances occur. In the past, higher seeded mid-major teams would often be forced to go to major conference mediocre teams that could sell more tickets [3]. Mid Major is a term mainly used in American college basketball and to a lesser extent college football to describe schools not affiliated with a BCS or other major conference. ...
Furthermore, ESPN will continue to provide television coverage of the tournament. The NIT has a 10-year, $24.1 million contract with ESPN; this compares with the 11-year, $6.2 billion TV contract with CBS for the NCAA tournament.
These changes are intended to encourage participation by good college teams that would rather stay home than play in the NIT – to make it the "Little Dance" instead of the "loser's tournament." NIT Committee Chairman C.M. Newton stated, "What we want to have is a true basketball event, a real tournament, one where there's no preconceived ideas of who gets to New York. We'd love to have great crowds, but this is not a financial consideration. We want good television coverage, but were not going to play this thing for television and move games around." [4]. Another positive consideration is that a #1-seeded team that goes to the semifinals will have three home games, which helps ticket sales.
Women's Tournaments Since the 1970s, there has been a Women's National Invitation Tournament. It began as an eight-team tournament in Amarillo, Texas. However, this is affiliated with the NIT in name only. It was not connected with MIBA and was not purchased by the NCAA. The women currently play both pre- and post-season tournaments similar to the men. The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ...
The Womens National Invitation Tournament (WNIT) is a college basketball tournament with a preseason and postseason version played every year. ...
Nickname: The Yellow Rose of Texas, Helium Capital of the World, Rotor City USA Official website: http://www. ...
Men's post-season NIT championships Temple University is a university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ...
Long Island University (LIU) is a private university located on Long Island in the U.S. state of New York. ...
University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder, UCB officially; Colorado, CU colloquially) is the flagship university of the University of Colorado system. ...
Long Island University (LIU) is a private university located on Long Island in the U.S. state of New York. ...
West Virginia University WVU Mountaineer Mascot statue in front of the Mountainlair Student Union. ...
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DuBourg Hall serves as the administration building for St. ...
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For other uses of the name Seton Hall see Seton Hall Seton Hall University is a Roman Catholic university in South Orange, New Jersey, 14 miles (23 km) from New York City. ...
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The University of Louisville (also known as U of L, Louisville, or the Ville) is a public, state-supported university located in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. It is mandated by Kentuckys General Assembly to be a Preeminent Metropolitan Research University. ...
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Brigham Young University, often referred to as BYU (or in colloquial speech simply the Y), is the flagship university of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church; see also Mormon). ...
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See also Purdue University System. ...
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Website Virginia. ...
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The campus on a sunny day California State University, Fresno, commonly referred to as Fresno State, or as the other FSU (that abbreviation being shared by Florida State University), is one of the campuses of California State University, located at the northeast edge of Fresno, California, at the foot of...
This article is about the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. ...
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Website Virginia. ...
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It has been suggested that UC Mens Chorale be merged into this article or section. ...
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This article is about the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. ...
The University of South Carolina, Columbia (USC or Carolina) is a public, coeducational, research university located in Columbia, South Carolina and is the flagship campus of the University of South Carolina System. ...
The University of South Carolina, Columbia (USC or Carolina) is a public, coeducational, research university located in Columbia, South Carolina and is the flagship campus of the University of South Carolina System. ...
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