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NCAA purchases NIT for $56.5M
From Wire Reports
Published: 08/18/05
NEW YORK – The NCAA purchased the rights to the preseason and postseason National Invitation Tournaments as part of a settlement that ends a four-year legal fight between the two parties.
The 40-team postseason NIT will now be run by the NCAA.
In the deal announced Wednesday at a news conference at Madison Square Garden, the NCAA will pay $56.5 million to the five New York City colleges that operate the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association, the organization that has run the NIT since 1940.
Fordham University, Manhattan College, St. John’s University, Wagner College and New York University will receive $40.5 million for the rights to tournaments and $16 million in litigation fees over a 10-year period. NCAA president Myles Brand said the tournaments will be played in New York for the next five years, and ESPN will continue to televise both tournaments.
NYU president John Sexton, who represented the MIBA, said it wasn’t a case of the schools settling for the money because of a turn in the civil trial – in which the NIT had claimed the NCAA was trying to put it out of business – that began two weeks ago in federal court.
“You can’t predict at any point in a trial where it is or where it’s going,” said Sexton, an attorney. “We had objectives. We wanted to see the NIT preserved, preserved as a New York asset and wanted to try and create a world where it can become even better than it is.”
The 2005 Preseason NIT, scheduled for November, will go on without change, Brand said. The NCAA will begin immediately to devise a system to select the teams for both NITs. Brand said the committee which selects and seeds the field of 65 will not be involved with the postseason NIT.
“We will start working as soon as we leave this room, and over the next few weeks we will have to work double time,” he said.
The NCAA running the Preseason NIT, one of several exempt events, won’t have an effect on current legislation regarding the rule that prohibits Division I teams from playing in more than two exempt tournaments in a four-year period.
“That rule is due to be considered by the NCAA through its normal governance process over the next three-to-six months,” Brand said. “That issue is on the table, and the Division I Board of Directors will take it up likely in October but no later than January.”
Brand said the NCAA would try to honor commitments made with schools and future Preseason NIT fields.
On Tuesday, a jury that had been listening to NIT witnesses and evidence in Manhattan was sent home for the day by U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum after lawyers said a deal had been struck to end the dispute.
Sexton said the schools were pleased with the outcome.
“It was victory without a defeat,” he said. “We have nurtured the NIT through the decades. The time has come to see it taken to a new level.”
NCAA purchases NIT for $56.5M
From Wire Reports
Published: 08/18/05
NEW YORK – The NCAA purchased the rights to the preseason and postseason National Invitation Tournaments as part of a settlement that ends a four-year legal fight between the two parties.
The 40-team postseason NIT will now be run by the NCAA.
In the deal announced Wednesday at a news conference at Madison Square Garden, the NCAA will pay $56.5 million to the five New York City colleges that operate the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association, the organization that has run the NIT since 1940.
Fordham University, Manhattan College, St. John’s University, Wagner College and New York University will receive $40.5 million for the rights to tournaments and $16 million in litigation fees over a 10-year period. NCAA president Myles Brand said the tournaments will be played in New York for the next five years, and ESPN will continue to televise both tournaments.
NYU president John Sexton, who represented the MIBA, said it wasn’t a case of the schools settling for the money because of a turn in the civil trial – in which the NIT had claimed the NCAA was trying to put it out of business – that began two weeks ago in federal court.
“You can’t predict at any point in a trial where it is or where it’s going,” said Sexton, an attorney. “We had objectives. We wanted to see the NIT preserved, preserved as a New York asset and wanted to try and create a world where it can become even better than it is.”
The 2005 Preseason NIT, scheduled for November, will go on without change, Brand said. The NCAA will begin immediately to devise a system to select the teams for both NITs. Brand said the committee which selects and seeds the field of 65 will not be involved with the postseason NIT.
“We will start working as soon as we leave this room, and over the next few weeks we will have to work double time,” he said.
The NCAA running the Preseason NIT, one of several exempt events, won’t have an effect on current legislation regarding the rule that prohibits Division I teams from playing in more than two exempt tournaments in a four-year period.
“That rule is due to be considered by the NCAA through its normal governance process over the next three-to-six months,” Brand said. “That issue is on the table, and the Division I Board of Directors will take it up likely in October but no later than January.”
Brand said the NCAA would try to honor commitments made with schools and future Preseason NIT fields.
On Tuesday, a jury that had been listening to NIT witnesses and evidence in Manhattan was sent home for the day by U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum after lawyers said a deal had been struck to end the dispute.
Sexton said the schools were pleased with the outcome.
“It was victory without a defeat,” he said. “We have nurtured the NIT through the decades. The time has come to see it taken to a new level.”
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