Tom Crean Rips Into Teams For Declining NIT Bids In Out-Of-Touch Rant

While the NCAA Tournament rightfully receives the majority of the spotlight on Selection Sunday, the NIT field is also finalized on the same day. This year's NIT will be missing a handful of teams who were not only on the NCAA Tournament bubble but are household names, and former college hoops coach Tom Crean has a problem with that reality.

Teams declining bids into the NIT isn't something new, but it's become more common in recent years with the emergence of NIL and the transfer portal. Coaches having to motivate a team to play in the second-tier tournament, a team that is undoubtedly losing players to the portal, while on the flip side trying to recruit the portal can turn into nothing but a waste of time for certain programs.

The likes of Memphis, Ole Miss, and Indiana - three teams that declined bids - were two to three wins away from making the tournament and will be overhauling their rosters, and that overhaul begins on Monday. 

It really comes down to spending all your energy into re-building your roster and recruiting the portal or giving some of that energy to play in a tournament that does virtually nothing for your program.

Crean is under the assumption coaches should be able to do both and got all sentimental with the ‘it’s about the kids' shtick during his rant on ESPN on Sunday evening.

"There is plenty of time for the portal, there is plenty of time to talk to recruits, there is plenty of time to negotiate NIL deals, there is not plenty of time to play, not plenty of time to get your players on the floor and give them a chance to get better," Crean shouted. "There is not plenty of time for guys to continue to play that may never get to play again."

Crean's heart is in the right place wanting players to be awarded at least one more game in a season, but that isn't the proper strategy for the majority of the teams who declined a bid into the NIT. 

The reality for those teams is that their offseasons began the moment they were bounced from their conference tournaments and discovered their fate wasn't going to be in the NCAA Tournament. 

Coaches winning one or two games in the NIT does absolutely nothing for their job security or the betterment of their program for the next season. Recruiting, putting together NIL deals, and attacking the transfer portal do.

One last thing to note here is that Crean is employed by ESPN and his rant came on the four-letter network, the same network that covers every game of the NIT and not a single NCAA Tournament game.