For the longest time, the NCAA carefully avoided Las Vegas, its gambling, its casinos, its temptations, its bad reputation and its potential problems. This is no longer the case, with Sin City even hosting the West region games during the last “March Madness”.
The Nevada city could even host a brand new NCAA tournament, according to information from The Messenger.
The idea is supported by FOX Sports, which holds broadcast rights to the Big 12, Big East and Big Ten conferences, and would therefore like to invite 16 teams, not qualified for “March Madness”, for this new tournament.
It would therefore not be a competitor for “March Madness”, far too popular at the university level to be competed by a new tournament, but rather for the NIT, the “National Invitation Tournament” which has become a sort of consolation of “March Madness”, by bringing together the teams which are not invited.
The advantage of the tournament proposed by FOX Sports, compared to the NIT, is that all the matches would be played in the same city, in Las Vegas.
In the current format, the teams in the “National Invitation Tournament” play their matches on the different campuses, before meeting at the semi-final and final stages. Historically, these took place at Madison Square Garden in New York. But in 2023, they took place… in the suburbs of Las Vegas.
