Why would anyone refuse an NCAA Tournament bid? This is what some schools had to say

The eve of the first full day of the frenzy that is NCAA Tournament, an event some suggest is the most captivating in sports, is a good time to remind it wasn’t always like this.

So much not like this, in fact, that there was a time when schools declined an invitation to participate.

Now, this was a time long ago. The last team to turn down a bid was Marquette some five decades ago.

But to think of what the NCAA Tournament has become, how it’s driven Division I membership — 353 members this school year — and coffers with its current $8.8 billion media rights deal, it’s strange to think this was once not where all college basketball teams wanted to be.

Take Marquette in 1970. Coach Al McGuire was so peeved about his NCAA Tournament assignment to the Midwest Region in Fort Worth, Texas, and not to the Mideast Region in Dayton, Ohio, that he decide to take his ball and go to … New York for the NIT.

“We’re being treated like patsies by the NCAA,” McGuire told the New York Times the night of the selection. “I’m disgusted and disappointed. We belong in the Mideast.”

It worked out fine for Marquette, which defeated Massachusetts with Julius Erving and LSU with Pete Maravich on its way to the championship.

After Marquette’s refusal, the NCAA put its foot down. A team that didn’t accept the NCAA bid could not participate in another postseason tournament. The NIT eventually filed an antitrust suit that was settled in 2005 when the NCAA bought the NIT for $56.5 million.

From the beginning of the NCAA Tournament in 1939 into the 1960s there were other reasons why schools turned down a NCAA bid.

In 1943, Illinois was the Big Ten champion but the season was cut short when three of the five starters headed off to active duty. They were known as the “Whiz Kids,” and the team voted before the end of the season not to participate in the NCAA Tournament or NIT.

In 1959, 1961 and 1962 Mississippi State interrupted Kentucky’s dominance with Southeastern Conference championships. But there was no NCAA Tournament for the team then known as the Maroons, not with the prospect of a segregated team meeting an integrated one.

In 1963, after another SEC title, Mississippi State defied a court injunction to keep the players from playing in the regional, snuck out town and made it to the NCAA Tournament in East Lansing, Michigan.

NIT preference was the reason Army passed up a NCAA bid in 1968. The team of third-year coach Bob Knight and junior guard Mike Krzyzewski, finished 20-5. Knight wanted his team to play close to home.

Army said yes to the NIT, and lost its first game at Madison Square Garden to Notre Dame on St. Patrick’s Day.

With Abilene Christian and Gardner-Webb making their NCAA Tournament debuts this year, Army is one of 40 schools currently in Division I never to have participated in the big dance, even when it was a little boogie.

This story was originally published March 20, 2019 at 4:25 PM with the headline "Why would anyone refuse an NCAA Tournament bid? This is what some schools had to say."