Quote:
Originally posted by Camron Rust
I do think, however, that Jurassic Referee worked the 1923 and 1927 college championship games; wasn't the big game the NIT championship at that time?
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Nah, I wasn't good enough to do those games. Watched 'em on the radio, though.
The winner of the NIT was regarded as the de facto National Champion right into the '50s. If I remember right, they played the tournaments after each other for a while, and some teams got invited to both. I think the CCNY national championship team from around 1951 won both tournaments. CCNY later had that national championship taken away because of a betting scandal, and they actually dropped their varsity program because of it. A year or two after that, Kentucky got nailed big time in a betting scandal too( around 1954, I think). Both CCNY and Kentucky had some great players banned for life- so they couldn't go to the NBA. That was about the time that the NIT began to lose it's lustre, and the NCAA started to grow in prominence until it was recognized as officialy being for the national championship. Just history, off the top of my head, for anybody interested.