When a team ranked outside the top 200 can receive an NIT bid without even being a conference champion automatic qualifier, it’s a clear sign the tournament’s importance is nearly gone.
Last year we wrote on how the NIT was dying and this year field isn’t looking much better.
For decades, the National Invitation Tournament carried real value in the college basketball ecosystem. It wasn’t the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, but it still served a clear purpose: a postseason landing spot for quality teams that just missed the NCAA field.
That role is now disappearing.
The biggest sign of the NIT’s decline is the simple quality of the teams being selected. In previous eras, the worst at-large teams in the field were usually around the 90th range in KenPom or similar analytical rankings. If a team wasn’t a conference champion receiving an automatic bid, it generally had to be respectable—often a fringe top-75 or top-80 team nationally.
This year’s field paints a very different picture.
Several teams in the tournament are ranked well outside the top 120, and some push toward the 150–200 range analytically. South Alabama, for example, entered the field ranked around 205th. That type of résumé would have been unthinkable for an at-large NIT selection even a decade ago. What was once a tournament for strong NCAA snubs is increasingly becoming a participation bracket for whoever is left.
A major reason for this shift is the arrival of the College Basketball Crown. The new event has effectively siphoned off many of the better teams that would have historically filled the NIT bracket. With conferences and television partners pushing their schools toward the newer tournament, the NIT is left with a dramatically weaker pool of candidates.
The numbers reflect it.
Not long ago, NIT champions frequently finished the season ranked between 20th and 50th in KenPom, often proving they were better than their NCAA snub suggested. Programs like Seton Hall, North Texas, and Penn State used NIT runs to validate their seasons and build momentum. The tournament could function as a proving ground for teams that slipped through the cracks on Selection Sunday.
That identity is fading fast.
Between the transfer portal, roster turnover, and declining prestige, many high-major programs simply don’t see the value in participating anymore. Some decline invitations altogether. Others prioritize offseason roster building instead of playing additional games in a tournament that now carries little national attention.
The result is a cascading effect: fewer top teams participate, the field weakens, and the perception declines even further.
The NIT still carries historical weight—it was once the most prestigious tournament in college basketball—but the modern version increasingly resembles the early stages of tournaments like the CBI: a postseason event searching for relevance.
Unless something changes, the trend seems clear. The NIT isn’t just declining.
