The Athletic is reporting that Fox Sports and AEG will sponsor the 16 team College Basketball Crown tournament starting next year, 2025.
Fox Sports’ NIT rival is official, the network announced Wednesday. The 16-team College Basketball Crown tournament will feature schools that failed to qualify for the men’s NCAA Tournament with two squads each from the Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East receiving automatis. Not coincidentally, all three conferences have college basketball television agreements with the network. The rest of the field will feature at-large participants but will only include men’s teams. The tournament will take place in Vegas’ MGM Garden Arena and MGM Arena, beginning March 31, 2025, and extend until April 6. AEG is a presenting sponsor. Games will air on both Fox and FS1.
Just what the world needs another post season mens basketball tournament primarily made up of P5 conference teams! Complete waste of time!
Now, Now, we could become the first team to win a game in the NIT, CIT, CBI and FIT without appearing in the NCAA tourney. I know what you're thinking, that'd be even better than an NCAA tournament selection.....
Are you an underachieving P5 school? Do you want to play a few games against other underachieving P5 schools with a chance to be crowned Least Most Disappointing? Well, we've got the tournament for you!
This tournament screws the NIT and is in the middle of portal season. Its 3 plus weeks after the invited teams were eliminated. I can’t see much interest in it.
This tournament screws the NIT and is in the middle of portal season. Its 3 plus weeks after the invited teams were eliminated. I can’t see much interest in it.
I bet FOX requires participation by the conferences that FOX has TV contracts with.
The NCAA could easily kill this new event by simply awarding the winner of the NIT an automatic berth in the following year's NCAA tourney. This is something this new FOX Sports tourney can't do, award an automatic NCAA bid. It would undercut this entire event because no one would turn down a chance to snag a guaranteed spot in next year's NCAA tourney.
This is similar to how Europe does it in soccer, where the winner of the 2nd rate Europa tournament is awarded an automatic invite to next season's Champions League tourney. This forces all the participants take it seriously since there's something real at stake.
