The College Basketball Crown is an annual men's college basketball tournament operated by Fox Sports and AEG Global Partnerships. The inaugural tournament will be held in 2025, on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada.[1]
Current season, competition or edition: 2025 College Basketball Crown | |
 Tournament logo | |
| Sport | College basketball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2024 |
| Founder | Fox Sports AEG Global Partnerships |
| First season | 2025 |
| No. of teams | 16 |
| Country | United States |
| Venue(s) | MGM Grand Garden Arena T-Mobile Arena |
| TV partner(s) | Fox, FS1 |
| Related competitions | NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament National Invitation Tournament |
Selection process
editTwo automatic qualifiers from each of the Big East, Big Ten and Big 12 conferences as well as ten at-large teams will be selected from the pool of teams that did not qualify for the NCAA tournament.[1] Although the official announcement of the launching of the tournament provided no details regarding selection criteria,[2] a September 2023 proposal for the tournament indicated that NET rankings would be used to select teams, which, at the time, were expected to include only Big East, Big Ten and Big 12 squads. Further, the proposal indicated that teams selected from those three conferences would be required to participate in the College Basketball Crown, which would make it impossible for them to also participate in the National Invitation Tournament, should they be selected or receive an automatic bid.[3]
Note that, while the NCAA does not allow schools invited to an NCAA championship tournament to decline and then compete in another postseason event, currently this rule does not apply to the Men's NIT, even though it is run by the NCAA. The NCAA responded to the announcement of the College Basketball Crown by announcing changes to the NIT to favor the major conferences at the expense of eliminating the automatic bids from teams who had the highest regular season record in their conference but did not receive NCAA Tournament bids, which disproportionately took NIT seeds (and in particular, upper seeds with lucrative home court advantage[4]) from mid-majors and to the major conferences, a move the NCAA admitted was anticompetitive.[5][6]
References
edit- ^ a b "Fox Sports & AEG Launch the College Basketball Crown: A Reimagined Postseason College Hoops Tournament". Fox Sports. April 3, 2024. Retrieved April 3, 2024.
- ^ Clinkscales, Jason (3 April 2024). "Fox Sports, AEG Launching 'College Basketball Crown' Tournament". Sportico. Retrieved May 31, 2024.
- ^ Davis, Seth (September 11, 2023). "Fox Sports in Negotiations to Hold a New Men's College Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas in Late March (Exclusive)". The Messenger. Archived from the original on October 12, 2023. Retrieved May 31, 2024.
- ^ Trass, Jerry (2024-03-19). "ESPN: Bonnies among 17 to decline NIT". Olean Times Herald. Retrieved 2024-03-20.
- ^ "Gavitt: NIT tweaks made to combat new tourney". ESPN.com. 2023-11-01. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
- ^ Miller, Andrew (2023-10-31). "NIT decision 'takes away' from mid-major schools, CofC AD says". Post and Courier. Retrieved 2023-11-12.