The canary in the coalmine of the shrinking college sports world

Somehow, a line buried in a statement from Oklahoma coach Porter Moser about accepting an invitation to the College Basketball Crown — the joke of a tournament in Las Vegas that’s decided to compete with the NIT for no particular reason, because what everybody was of course demanding was a lame version of the NIT — managed to speak volumes about the current state of college sports and college basketball specifically:

“The Crown had a very successful first year in 2025 and is comprised of all high-major teams.” There it is. The idea that the Crown had a very successful first year is so false that the Crown immediately shrunk its field from 16 teams to 8, exactly the kind of thing that says “WE ARE A VERY SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS MODEL.”

Advertisement

Unless… that was the point? Because the second part of that statement — it’s comprised of all high-major teams — was actually not true in 2025, when Boise State, George Washington, Oregon State, Tulane, and Washington State. (Okay, it’s mean to include a couple of former Pac-12 teams in there. It’s not mean to include a former SEC team; you made your own bed, Greenies.) Shrinking the field means that the Crown, which waited a full 24 hours after the NCAA Tournament field was announced — probably because they actually had to find eight teams to fill out the field. With the Big Ten, Big East, and Big 12 all guaranteed two automatic bids to the Crown… well, let’s take a look.

Okay, Cincinnati opted out after firing its coach, but the next two NET teams — Baylor and West Virginia — accepted the Big 12’s two bids. The Big Ten got all the way down to Minnesota and Rutgers — the fifth- and seventh-best non-NCAA Tournament teams, according to NET — which means five teams definitely declined bids, and Maryland and Penn State might have as well.

The Big East had eight of its eleven teams miss the NCAA Tournament. One of them is playing in the Crown. None are playing in the NIT. (The latter, of course, is…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/canary-coalmine-shrinking-college-sports-001049493.html

Author :

Publish date : 2026-03-17 00:10:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.