From: dwarner@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (David J.)
Subject: Re: How much is the NIT title worth?
Keywords: NIT
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 18:18:26 GMT

In article <92290.092806U52809@uicvm.uic.edu> Chuck Amsler <U52809@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
>A small "discussion" has started about NIT titles being a kind of
>National Championship.  Clearly, at one time the NIT was as or even
>more prestigious than the NCAA, but that was a long time ago when
>the NCAA tourney was fairly new.  IMHO, it is absurd to call a
>"modern" NIT title a "national championship", but I wonder just
>what a NIT title is worth today to a team and their fans.  I've
>always thought that its biggest worth was doubling the number of
>teams that get to end the post-season with a victory celebration.

Well, the biggest thing to remember about the NIT is that it used to be a
tournament for all non-champions in the conference.  If the NCAA only admitted
conference champs like they used to, we would have seen Indiana, Michigan,
UNC, Florida State, Georgetown and numerous other schools that made the
current field of 64 (I won't mention too many others because I don't remember
who won which conference bid last year. Y'all are welcome to fill those in.)

In that type of situation, Duke would not have had the chance to go to the 
Final Four in 1989, '90, or '91.  In that case, an NIT championship for the
Devils would be incredible.  Instead, sixth place Virginia won last year's
NIT.  Not to take anything away from the Hoos (I did think Bryant Stith
deserved to go out on top after a horrible ACC tourney), but that takes a
lot away from the NIT.

>If you had some magical power to choose between your team winning
>the NIT and your team going to the NCAA and losing, how many rounds
>in the NCAA (before the loss) would cause you to choose the
>eventual NCAA loss over the NIT championship?  Is getting to the
>Final Four better than the NIT crown?  Is "tieing for #33" (by
>losing in the first round of the NCAA) better than winning the NIT
>and coming in #65?  I'd answer "yes" to the first and "no" to the
>second.  My subjective fan pride scale puts winning the NIT at
>about the same level as getting to the Sweet Sixteen before losing
>[+/- one round, 95% confidence interval :-) ].  What do you think?

If you put the pride factor aside, the main factor the NCAA/NIT argument is
probably money.  The big dance has gotten so big that the more schools that
get put into the tournament from a particular conference and the more
successful they are, the more money that conference gets for all its schools.
Take a look at the ACC, which had four schools in the sweet 16 (Duke, UNC,
Florida State & Georgia Tech) and 5 appearances in the Final Four in the
last three years (Duke 3, UNC 1, Tech 1) and two national championships.
Then there's the Big Ten, who put two schools in the FF in '89 and '92, the
Big Eight, who put Kansas and Oklahoma in the '88 Final, and the Big East,
who dropped 3 of the Final 4 in '85 and Villanova & G'Town in the final.

The way these things are set up now, the big conferences make too much loot
for having multiple teams in the tourney, and those conferences bring most
of the big name teams to the show anyway. It would be more of a pride thing
for a school in a small conference that didn't get the automatic bid to make 
the NCAA over the NIT than a fifth or sixth place team from one of the big 
conferences.

>  -- Chuck Amsler                    U52809@UICVM.UIC.EDU

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