NCAA announces a new second-tier women's basketball tournament

The Game Room
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The NCAA, in its attempts to equalize how it handles men’s and women’s basketball as much as possible while taking some realizations into account (for example, the women’s tournament only has two regional sites, and the first weekend games are always on the highest seed’s home court), just announced it is starting a new tournament similar to the Men’s NIT, called the Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament, or WBIT. The only two things we know about it so far is, (a) it will start in 2024, and (b) it will have 32 teams, like the Men’s NIT.

“Why didn’t they call it the WNIT?”, you ask? Because there already is a WNIT, run by another organization. Its response: it will also be run in 2024, but the number of teams will be reduced from the 64 it had in past years to 48. Note that the WNIT is closer to the men’s CBI in terms of how it is run; from what I have heard, schools pay to host games.

I wonder what the over/under is on how many years it will take for the WNIT to either (a) fold, since it no longer has access to a number of the “good” teams that didn’t get into the NCAA tournament, or (b) sell the name to the NCAA, as I have a feeling a considerable number of people are going to call the WBIT “the Women’s NIT” anyway, and get a corporate sponsor for a needed cash injection?

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Especially if people start calling the new tourney “the Wibbit”, which is what came to my mind when I saw the initialism.

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I think you can stop at “(a) fold” because the quality of the basketball will be totally uninspiring, and that’s putting it politely. The women’s equivalent of March Madness has the best women players and best women’s teams in the country. The stars have mad skills and the teams play quality basketball. A second tier group of women’s teams will have neither.