As March Madness gets underway Tuesday night in Dayton with the First Four of the men’s NCAA tournament, so too does a once-prestigious event that is losing more flair each year: the National Invitation Tournament.

Founded in 1938 and gearing up for its 86th edition, the winner of the NIT early on in its history was often regarded as that year’s true national champion, as opposed to who came out victorious at the NCAA tournament. That clearly hasn’t been the case for decades, though, and now the NIT is struggling to maintain any relevance at all in the shifting college sports landscape.

Twelve Power 5 schools and five from the Big East will make up just over half of the NIT’s 32-team field that boasts Indiana State, Seton Hall, Wake Forest, and Villanova as its top seeds. But that was finalized only after eight major universities either declined invitations or made it known they would not accept one. Indiana, Memphis, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh, St. John’s, Syracuse, and Washington all presumably could have been in the NIT, if they wanted to.

Shrinking Footprint

The NIT has been controlled by the NCAA since 2005, and its media rights are baked into ESPN’s overarching college championships package that will pay out $920 million over the next eight years under a newly signed contract. But the women’s NCAA tournament comprises $65 million of that deal’s $115 million annual value. Last year, North Texas won its first NIT title over UAB in the final that garnered just 370,000 viewers on ESPN2 on a Thursday night. That was the lowest audience for the NIT title game since at least ’11, according to Sports Media Watch.

This year’s NIT semifinals and final will take place at Butler’s 9,100-seat Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, airing on the main ESPN channel next month the day before the Final Four begins 1,700 miles away in Phoenix, where nearly 150,000 fans will watch the NCAA tournament end.

March Madness Expansion?

Last week, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark spoke publicly about possibly expanding the men’s NCAA tournament to 76 teams after recent reports suggested momentum for adding teams to the field was under consideration. Bubble teams that feel snubbed this year would surely be more interested in participating in an expanded NCAA tournament than future iterations of the NIT. But whether their disinterest in the longstanding event leads to the growth of its rival remains to be seen.

Change and turbulence are continuing for the Mets under MLB’s richest owner as the team laid off about 25 members of its business operations staff Tuesday, sources confirmed to Front Office Sports.

The personnel moves mark the latest in an extended series of dramatic events for the team in the last eight months as Steve Cohen (above) has poured unprecedented resources into the franchise, but he has yet to see the full returns of that expenditure and ambition. 

The layoffs are not a direct result of New York’s 75–87 finish in 2023 that was far below the World Series expectations of many pundits, were not dictated by Cohen, and do not extend to baseball operations. Rather, the moves were led by M. Scott Havens, the Mets’ new head of business operations, who, after arriving in January, conducted an extensive review of the team’s staff and then made the cuts. The layoffs represent a single-digit percentage of the Mets’ overall business-side personnel. 

“Over the last several years, many of our departments have grown well beyond sustainable levels, and larger than our peer group with Major League Baseball,” Havens said in a staff memo obtained by FOS. “While I understand this type of change is difficult and impacts all of us, these decisions were a necessary step in helping us evolve as an organization, and more importantly, to set us up for long-term growth and success.”

Changes Continue

Just since last summer’s non-waiver trade deadline, the Mets and Cohen have:

• Dismantled key parts of what was a league-record $344 million payroll to start last season 
• Issued an extended apology letter to season-ticket holders for the “disappointment” of the 2023 season
• Hired former Brewers executive David Stearns as its new president of baseball operations 
• Began to reap the benefits of a refinancing of Citi Field stadium construction bonds, a transaction projected to generate more than $200 million in total savings between now and 2046 
• Proposed an $8 billion casino and entertainment complex adjacent to Citi Field 
• Brought in Havens, the former CEO of Bloomberg Media and, before that, an executive with Time Inc. and The Atlantic, to lead the team’s business operations

Even after last year’s payroll cuts, the Mets will enter the 2024 season with one of MLB’s highest payrolls, currently tagged at nearly $284 million. The team, however, plays in one of the league’s toughest divisions, with the Braves, Phillies, and Marlins all reaching last year’s playoffs.