The unofficial online home for fans of the Kent State University Golden Flashes. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

Burden, you are right about the NIT. It took quite a while for the NCAA tournament to really catch on. I believe the last team to choose the NIT over the NCAA was Marquette in 1970, because they were angry over which regional they were placed in. Because of that, the NCAA barred teams that chose not to play in the NCAA from playing in another tournament. Lawsuits followed and I'm not sure how that ultimately played out, but it's moot because no team would decline an NCAA bid now. For a long time the NIT was a 16 team field with every game at Madison Square Garden. NYC was the mecca of college basketball at one time. Not anymore. I've been following college basketball since the mid-1950's and I could write a book about the changes in the sport since then, like the whole "mid-major" thing. That whole concept didn't really begin until the late 1970's. Teams now considered mid-major used to routinely attempt to recruit top players (now called 5 star), and sometimes succeeded. Not so much now. Really "money" has been the difference,[/b]