Hard on the heels of its statement that it won’t be increasing the men’s madness in March by adding new teams, NCAA has shaken things up a bit by announcing the creation of its branded Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament, known as WBIT.
It has also updated its championship site selection and bid process timelines, releasing a new set of dates.
First, though, is the WBIT. The 32-team postseason tournament, which will be owned and funded by the NCAA, will be held annually beginning in 2024. The WBIT is a new event that will exist independently of all other women’s basketball postseason tournaments.
The NCAA broke the news last week, and carried the announcement on its website.
With the addition of the WBIT, 100 postseason NCAA-funded opportunities will be available for Division I women's basketball teams, equal to that of men's basketball through its two events (the 68-team championship and 32-team National Invitation Tournament).
Details about the tournament's format (including the selection process, bracketing principles and host sites) will be released later. Expect there to be a strong interest in hosting, particularly at the inaugural level.
"Women's basketball is at an all-time high with records being set for national championship and Final Four viewership, and the tournament was the most viewed since 2009," said Jamie Boggs, chair of the Division I Women's Basketball Oversight Committee and vice president of athletics for Grand Canyon. "This tournament will create an additional NCAA-funded postseason opportunity for women's basketball, and it comes at a time when we are seeing tremendous growth in popularity for women's basketball."
The NCAA also released branding for the tournament, which continues to highlight orange in alignment with other NCAA women's basketball branding, including the March Madness logo. The WBIT logo — which is inspired by a backboard and net — also will feature blue to tie into the NCAA's primary branding.
Later this summer, the NCAA will identify a selection committee, comprising women's basketball stakeholders and NCAA members, to administer the WBIT.
The news was greeted with, well, shrugs. The Spun, in particular, noted, “A privately operated WNIT has existed since 1998, so it's unclear if the 64-team postseason tournament will continue. However, programs occasionally turned down an invitation because they'd have to pay their own way.”
NCAA has been working to increase opportunities for women, and to prove that it values its female athletes. Unfortunately, the effort did not get off to a good start (and that is putting it mildly). Back in 2021, the training facilities for women’s basketball during March Madness made headlines – and not in a good way, when it was revealed on social media that the men had a full-on weight and fitness room while the women had a rack of dumbbells. (Oh, and NCAA’s claims that this was due to a space issue fell to the ground when University of Oregon's Sedona Prince took to TikTok and showed a cavernous empty space near that rack of dumbbells that could have been used for training equipment.)
“If you’re not upset about this problem, then you’re a part of it,” Prince concluded.
A second slight to women’s basketball (though not on the part of NCAA; this was in a separately organized competition) occurred over Thanksgiving weekend in 2022. It should have been, according to Insider, “A two-day Thanksgiving weekend tournament that featured nine Division I teams, including the undefeated top-10 Indiana Hoosiers, competing on the Las Vegas Strip at The Mirage hotel. But instead of playing under the bright lights of Sin City in the Athletes Unlimited-style setup they were promised, as Big Ten Network's Meghan McKeown reported, teams arrived to find a shoddy court situated in the corner of a ballroom.”
And what happened in Vegas not only did not stay in Vegas. It went completely viral.
Social media simply roasted the tournament, with multiple tweets showing side-by-side photos of men’s teams playing in professional arenas – and the women in the ballroom, with its glitzy chandeliers, beveled ceiling and spectators sitting on chairs rather than bleachers. Some spectators can be seen standing to try to actually get a decent sightline.
So the arrival of the NBIT, an earnest effort on NCAA’s part, should be welcome news to basketball teams. In fact, NCAA has set up a list of FAQs to help users navigate the concept of the new tournament.
Updates to the Championship Site Selection and Bid Process Timeline
NCAA announced the updates to the processes and timeline following an internal strategic business review. Changes are as follows:
The process will be adjusted from a four-year process to a two-year process, with hosts and sites being awarded for approximately 88 of the 90 NCAA championships for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 academic years.
Additionally, the opening of the bid portal and publication of bid specifications have been rescheduled for September 6, 2023. These adjustments will help further analyze future processes and allow the ability to upgrade the current bid portal for a better user experience. None of the other key dates have been adjusted.
The timeline for the bid process is as follows:
- August 29, 2023: Host symposium hosted at NCAA national office
- September 6, 2023: Bid specifications will be published on www.ncaa.org/bids; bid portal opens.
- February 7, 2024: Bid responses due.
- March-September 2024: Committee deliberations, recommendations and approvals.
- October 2, 2024: Hosts/sites announced.
Questions should be directed to Ryan Tressel at rtressel@ncaa.org.
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