It's become cliché to rip on national news...but national news sucks.
For as long as I've been alive, college basketball's postseason has been superior to college football's in every area but one: The NIT. Just about every sports fan in this country has called for the abolition of what has become an increasingly meaningless tournament. With that in mind, I'm not saying this is a bad idea, I'm saying it's an awful idea.
The College Basketball Invitational will be staged this March by The Gazelle Group, which is based in Princeton, N.J., and runs the 2K Sports College Hoop Classic that benefits Coaches vs. Cancer and the O'Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic.
The NCAA invites 65 teams to its tournament and the National Invitation Tournament -- which started in 1938, a year before the NCAA -- selects another 32. The NIT reduced its field last season from 40.
The NCAA has owned the NIT since 2005 as part of a settlement that ended a four-year legal fight between the parties.
The CBI intends to compete with the NIT for teams that did not make the NCAA's field of 65.
"It would be unfair for us to wait, so we're going to let the NCAA pick their field and then we'll invite the 66th team, it wouldn't be fair not to," Gazelle Group president Rick Giles said Wednesday night. "One of the big things is giving teams a choice. Competition is good and makes everything better. To date there hasn't been a choice and we'll make this a viable choice."
Rick Pitino's recruiting class got a lot of attention yesterday, but how about Jeff Walz? The head coach of the women's basketball team signed five players who were ranked in the nation's top 100, and assembled a recruiting class that is ranked 10th in the country by HoopGurlz.com.
My guess is that many of you have seen this by now, so I'm just gonna toss it out there, and then slowly back away.
Brian Bennett has a thorough breakdown of Louisville's bowl prospects that makes it clear just how important this Saturday's game at South Florida is (important as in, hoping to play an average team from Conference USA before Christmas important). Bennett also reveals later in the post that he's a fan of Jay-Z's new album "American Gangster," to which I can only say: That's not a business blog, it's a business blog...ah, there's nothing like a little esoteric Jay-Z humor to kick-start an early weekend.
Looking for your token "Louisville opponent gears up for high-powered Louisville offense" article? Daddy's all over it.
Still fresh off its first appearance in the College World Series, the Louisville baseball team has unveiled its 2008 schedule. Fans will have 34 opportunities to see the Cardinal Nine at home.
I'm off to celebrate the birth of my third nephew, so this will probably be the last you'll hear from me today. But there's plenty of good South Florida/Hartford discussion on tap for tomorrow.
Peace.