Off we go, we now have a 3rd post-season tournament, the College Basketball Invitational!

Move over NCAA and NIT, here comes the 16-team College Basketball Invitational! Okay, it won't do any damage to the NCAA or NIT. This will be the third tier tournament, after the NCAA and NIT field is selected. Although it may make a play on the NIT perhaps at some point in the future - maybe. It will be single elimination on campus games but with a twist, the champion will be determined in a Best of Three playoff series. Yes, playoffs with colleges!

The NIT took away eight post season bids by retracting from 40 to 32 teams, so the 16-team CBI is "gaining" a net of 8 post season births when comparing to two years ago, and 16 when comparing to last year.

Perhaps a sign of desperation for coaches getting fired for not reaching the post season? It will be interesting to see how the teams are selected. Will it be 12 BCS teams and 4 mid-majors or will it be more merit based?

More details on the brand new men's post-season College Basketball Invitational from CSTV. The event will kick off right away, in March 2008 and it is produced by the Gazelle Group of Princeton, New Jersey.

And for fun, they have prepared a mock draft of what the CBI of 2007 would have looked like. This is in PDF file format.

To summarize the story: Desperate basketball coaches beg for more post season births to save their jobs and get an extra 16 spots :)