Founding The post-season National Invitation Tournament was founded in 1938 by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association, one year after the
NAIA tournament was created by basketball's inventor
Dr. James Naismith, and one year before the
NCAA tournament. The
first NIT was won by the
Temple University Owls over the
Colorado Buffaloes. showcasing the
"National Championship Trophy" won by
Temple in 1938. Responsibility for the NIT's administration was transferred in 1940 to the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Committee, a body of local New York colleges:
Fordham University,
Manhattan University,
New York University,
St. John's University, and
Wagner College. This became the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA) in 1948. Originally the tournament invited a field of six teams, with all games played at
Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. The field was expanded to eight teams in
1941, 12 in
1949, 14 in
1965, 16 in
1968, 24 in
1979, 32 in
1980, and 40 from
2002 through
2006. From
2007 to
2019 and since
2022, the tournament reverted to the current 32-team format;
2021 saw the field cut to 16 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, where no games were scheduled the year before.
Early advantages over the NCAA tournament In its earliest years, before 1950, the NIT offered some advantages over the NCAA tournament: • There was limited national media coverage of college basketball in the 1930s and 1940s, and playing all of its games in New York City provided teams greater media exposure, both with the general public and among high school prospects in its rich recruiting territory. The NCAA also staged its eastern regional final in New York City from 1943 through 1950, as well as its Final Four from 1943 through 1948. • Until 1950, the NCAA tournament selection committee invited only one team each from eight national regions, potentially leaving better quality selections and natural rivals out of its field, which would opt for the NIT.
Prestige From its onset and at least into the mid-1950s, the NIT was regarded as the most prestigious showcase for college basketball.
John McPhee, the writer for
The New Yorker, described the tournament: Several teams played in both the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same year, beginning with
Colorado and
Duquesne in 1940. Colorado won the NIT in 1940 but subsequently finished fourth in the
NCAA West Region. In 1944,
Utah lost its first game in the NIT but then proceeded to win not only the NCAA tournament, but also the subsequent Red Cross War Charities benefit game in which they defeated NIT champion
St. John's at
Madison Square Garden. In 1949, some
Kentucky players were bribed by gamblers to lose their first round game in the NIT. This same Kentucky team went on to win the NCAA. In 1950,
City College of New York won both the NIT and the NCAA tournaments in the same season, coincidentally defeating
Bradley University in the championship game of both tournaments, and remains the only school to accomplish that feat because of an NCAA committee change in the early 1950s prohibiting a team from competing in both tournaments. The champions of the NCAA and NIT tournaments played each other for three seasons during
World War II. From 1943 to 1945, the
American Red Cross sponsored a postseason charity game between each year's tournament champions to raise money for the war effort. The series was described by
Ray Meyer as not just benefit games, but as "really the games for the national championship". The NCAA champion prevailed in all three games. The
Helms Athletic Foundation retrospectively selected the NIT champion as its national champion for 1938 (
Temple) and chose the NIT champion over the NCAA champion once, in 1939 (
Long Island). More recently, the mathematically based
Premo-Porretta Power Poll published in the
ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia retrospectively ranked teams for each season prior to 1949, the year in which the Associated Press poll was implemented. For the period when the tournaments overlapped between 1939 and 1948, Premo-Porretta ranked the NIT champion ahead of the NCAA champion twice (1939 and 1941) and the NCAA champion ahead of the NIT champion eight times. Between 1939 and 1970, when teams could compete in either tournament, only
DePaul (1945),
Utah (1947),
San Francisco (1949) and
Holy Cross (1954) claim or celebrate national championships for their teams based solely on an NIT championship, although Long Island recognizes its selection as the 1939 national champion by Helms Athletic Foundation, which was made retrospectively in 1943. In 1943 the NCAA tournament moved to share Madison Square Garden with the NIT in an effort to increase the credibility of the NCAA Tournament. Since the mid-1950s, the NCAA tournament has been popularly regarded by most institutions as the pre-eminent postseason tournament, with conference champions and the majority of the top-ranked teams participating in it. The team played in the NIT instead, which it won. This led the NCAA to decree in 1971 that any school to which it offered a bid must accept it or be prohibited from participating in postseason competition, reducing the pool of teams that could accept an NIT invitation.
Decline As the NCAA tournament expanded its field to include more teams, the reputation of the NIT suffered. In 1973,
NBC moved televised coverage of the NCAA championship from Saturday afternoon to Monday evening, On August 12, 2022, the NCAA announced that the final rounds of the 2023 NIT would be held at
Orleans Arena in
Paradise, Nevada and hosted by nearby
UNLV, and the 2024 site would be
Butler University's
Hinkle Fieldhouse in
Indianapolis.
Reputation The status of the post-season National Invitation Tournament as a "consolation" fixture has led to something of a stigma in the minds of many fans. When teams with tenuous hopes of an NCAA Tournament berth lose away from home late in the season, opposing fans may taunt the players in the closing seconds with chants of "NIT! NIT!" 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 taunt to a defeated team, "The three-letter word ... was far more cutting than any
four-letter word they could have hollered." Because the post-season NIT consists of teams that failed to receive a berth in the NCAA Tournament, the NIT has been nicknamed the "Not Invited Tournament", "Not Important Tournament", "Never Important Tournament", "Nobody's Interested Tournament", "Needs Improvement Tournament", "No Important Team", "National Insignificant Tournament", or simply "Not In Tournament". It has also been called a tournament to see who the "69th best team" in the country is (since there are now 68 teams in the NCAA Tournament).
David Thompson, an
All-American player from
North Carolina State, called the NIT "a loser's tournament" in 1975. NC State, which had been
the previous year's NCAA champion, refused to play in the tournament that year, following the precedent set by ACC rival
Maryland the previous season after losing the
Atlantic Coast Conference championship game to the top-ranked Wolfpack. In succeeding years, other teams such as
Oklahoma State,
Louisville,
Georgia Tech,
Georgetown, and
LSU have declined to play in the NIT when they did not make the NCAA tournament. One such team was
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 Terrapins were eliminated in the first round by the
Manhattan University Jaspers. In 2008, however, Williams announced that if invited, the Terps would play, because it would serve as a chance to further develop six freshman players on his squad and to give senior forward
James Gist more exposure. At
UCLA's
Pauley Pavilion, there are individual championship banners for all 11 NCAA titles; there hung a banner for
UCLA's 1985 NIT championship until the 1995 NCAA championship banner replaced it. However, during the recent remodeling of Pauley Pavilion a plaque was installed along the concourse of the building commemorating the Bruins' 1985 NIT Championship. For other teams, however, the NIT is perceived as a step up, helping programs progress from mediocrity or obscurity to prominence, and the response is more enthusiastic. For example, at the
University of Tulsa, which won the NIT in 1981 and 2001, the
Golden Hurricane's NIT "championship tradition" is viewed with pride and as a "lure" for players to join the program. The
University of Connecticut also regards the NIT as the beginning of its success. The NIT is also held in generally higher regard than the newer tournaments that have debuted since 2008 (the
College Basketball Invitational, and
CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament, plus
The Basketball Classic and the
Vegas 16, which both folded after only one edition), however some teams are opting for the more recent
College Basketball Crown.
St. Bonaventure, a school that, since 2014, has a policy of refusing to play in those newer tournaments, still accepted bids to the NIT, if invited. In 2024, St. Bonaventure declined an NIT invitation despite head coach
Mark Schmidt indicating he wanted his team to play in the NIT. Five days later, athletic director
Joe Manhertz resigned amidst controversy regarding the opt-out decision. St. Bonaventure was not alone in declining an NIT bid, but only
Memphis accompanied them as a non-power conference team. The NIT Season Tip-Off carries none of the postseason tournament's stigma and is one of many popular season-opening tournaments held every year around the country (alongside events such as the
Maui Invitational and the now-defunct
Great Alaska Shootout). ==Selection process==