Scott Adamson, Author at Adamsonmedia.com

When Marquette snubbed the NCAA

**Marquette coach Al McGuire didn’t like his team’s Midwest Regional placement in the 1970 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, so he took an NIT bid instead.**

Today at 6 p.m. ET, the field for the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament will be announced, officially bringing the joy of March Madness to 68 schools.

At 9:30 p.m., the National Invitation Tournament will reveal its bracket – one chock full of teams bitterly disappointed that they failed to make the Big Dance.

**Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Bluesky @scottadamson1960.bsky.social**

There is no confusion about the hierarchy of postseason tourneys in modern college hoops: if you aren’t in the competition that ultimately crowns a national champion, every matchup is a consolation game.

Of course, there was a time when the NIT was the premiere event in amateur basketball, playing all its games at Madison Square Garden in New York with the tourney winner considered America’s top collegiate team for the season. It began in 1938, predating the NCAA tourney by a year.

But the competition sponsored by the sport’s governing body became the alpha by the 1960s, and by 1969 the NCAA Tournament was clearly the main event of collegiate basketball, featuring 25 participants.

The NIT, on the other hand, had just 16 schools in its field.

Yet, while the senior tournament was no longer the star attraction, it still carried a measure of prestige. And in 1970, the Marquette Warriors actually turned down an NCAA bid in favor of an NIT berth.

Marquette (23-3) was ranked No. 8 in the Associated Press poll when the 1969-70 regular season ended, and on February 24, 1970, the school was one of 10 programs to receive at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament.

The others were Jacksonville, Notre Dame, St. Bonaventure, New Mexico State, Houston, Utah State, Villanova, Niagara and Long Beach State. Fifteen conference champions earned automatic bids.

However, the NCAA Selection Committee placed Marquette in the Midwest Regional, which was being played in Fort Worth, Texas. Warrior coach Al McGuire declined the invite because he thought his team deserved to play closer to home in the Mideast Regional, contested in Dayton, Ohio. They were the third highest-ranked independent school named to the field.

“I am very disappointed,” McGuire told AP. “Our heart was set on going to the NCAA.”

McGuire said he talked to NCAA officials and told them Marquette deserved the Mideast Region berth regardless of whether teams were picked based on strength of schedule, records or rankings.

“We belong in Dayton, Ohio,” McGuire said. “That’s all there is to it. I can’t see their thinking.”

Tom Scott, Davidson athletic director and chairman of the NCAA Selection Committee, said he was sorry Marquette decided to opt out.

“Our selection committee ranks the teams in each region and Marquette was third in the Mideast, behind both Notre Dame and Jacksonville,” Scott explained in a United Press International story. “We have only two at-large berths in the Mideast and so the third team is the ‘swing’ team – the team we can, according to the (rule book), move to another regional.

“Our purpose is to select the 10 independent teams we consider the best in the country and we certainly feel Marquette is one of those teams.”

Based on Scott’s logic the decision made perfect sense, but McGuire wasn’t having it. His team had been in the Mideast Regional the previous two seasons, and his 1969-70 squad had a better record than either of those teams.

“I’m disgusted,” he said. “We take basketball seriously here. Maybe it was something between me and the committee … I don’t know. They speak out of both sides of their mouth. First, they speak about schedules, then records. We can’t do any better than we did. What do we have to do – 23-0?”

The Warriors’ leading scorer – junior guard Dean Meminger – backed his coach.

“You must stand up against the establishment,” Meminger said in a February 25 UPI article. “You can’t let people walk over you. What the committee did was a total contradiction.

“My heart was set on going to the NCAA because I wanted to play against the best.”

While Dayton was quickly named as Marquette’s replacement in the NCAA Tourney, the Warriors just as quickly accepted an NIT bid.

McGuire’s team opened with an 83-63 victory over Utah.

“There is a certain electricity about the NIT,” McGuire told Newsday’s George Usher. “It turns New York into a small town – a Madison, Wisconsin – but a lot of so-called dreams are put in the background. I’m just tickled pink the NIT is alive and took us in.”

Marquette thumped LSU (and “Pistol Pete” Maravich), 101-79, in the semi-finals, limiting Maravich to 20 points – 27 points below his average.

And the Warriors claimed the NIT Championship with a 65-53 win over St. John’s on March 21, their twelfth consecutive victory.

“I felt we could win the NCAA, but I’m happy to win any championship,” McGuire said. “I’ve never won one anywhere.”

The same night of the NIT finals, the UCLA Bruins claimed their fourth consecutive national championship with an 80-69 victory over Jacksonville. The Dolphins, by the way, won the Mideast Regional.

The 1969-70 season was the last time an NCAA Tournament invitee had the option of trading down to the NIT. Starting with the 1970-71 campaign, any school receiving an NCAA bid was required to accept it.

Incidentally, Marquette was selected as an at-large team in the 1977 NCAA Tournament and – you guessed it – sent to the Midwest Regional.

In McGuire’s last game before retiring, the Warriors defeated North Carolina, 67-59, to claim his only national championship and – to date – the school’s lone NCAA men’s basketball crown.

Bruiser

“Hey, Brenda,” Chandler said, holding the porcelain figurine in his hand, “is this yard sale material?”

Brenda moved in for a closer look, took it from Chandler, and examined it carefully. It was a sad tramp clown holding a red umbrella.

“Honestly,” she said, “I have no idea where this even came from. It seems pretty nice, though … shiny, undamaged. Lots of people like knickknacks so, yeah, we can sell it. Put a $5 tag on it.”

The couple had spent much of the morning in purge mode. They were preparing to move to a smaller house after a decade at their current abode, and like many people had collected far more things than they could ever want or need.

While some were headed straight for the dumpster – cracked lamp globes and a vacuum cleaner that would cost more to repair than replace, for example – others still had enough value to be placed on a folding table and snatched up by pickers and browsers. They’d spend the rest of the day gathering them up and prepping for Saturday’s sale.

So far, Chandler had discovered more than 30 lightly-worn ballcaps, several old but still usable softball gloves, and five wristwatches he was willing to part with because, well, he’d given up wristwatches shortly after smartphones were invented.

Brenda had set out dishes, dresses, a few gardening supplies and a microwave. Still, there were plenty of other items that weren’t going to survive the relocation, and the pair wanted to lighten their load as much as possible.

As Chandler prepared to look in the basement for more treasures, Brenda emerged from the hall closet.

“Looks like I found an old friend of yours,” she said with a laugh.

Among some of the items she had placed in a cardboard box was a 1970s era plush football doll, complete with a rosy-cheeked cupid face. The helmet was dingy white with a green stripe and the jersey – emblazoned with a green number one – was faded yellow, with cotton coming out of a busted seam on its left side. It was 50-plus years old and looked it.

“Oh, wow,” said Chandler, pulling the doll from the box. “Good ol’ Bruiser … I haven’t seen him in years.”

Chandler eased down to the floor and laid the doll in front of him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had even thought about it, but its reemergence brought back a flood of memories.

He decided around the age of seven that he loved football, and enjoyed sitting next to his father on Saturdays and Sundays watching college and pro games on their boxy RCA console.

“Dad,” he’d ask, “will you take me to a game someday?”

“You bet, kiddo. I promise.”

Chandler remembered the promise was made in 1974, and the promise was kept that same year. The local college team – the Goldenrod State Yellowhammers – was taking on the Carolina Poly Pioneers at Memorial Field.

More than half a century later, details of the experience remained vivid. The game was played on September 8, Goldenrod State won, 35-6, the hot dog he scarfed down was prepackaged in a foil wrapper, and his dad bought him the toy while they were getting soft drinks at halftime.

“It didn’t look like they had any pennants,” he recalled his dad saying as he handed over the doll (along with a watered-down cola), “but ol’ Bruiser here ought to do. He’ll look good on your dresser.”

For years, Bruiser served as a reminder of Chandler’s first in-person college football game, and occupied various spots in his bedroom – not unlike the “Elf on the Shelf.” It shifted from the dresser to the nightstand and – at one point – found itself on a table by the window, nudged between a red, white and blue football on its left and a plastic football helmet on its right.

But like most kids, Chandler grew out of his toy phase, and Bruiser eventually lost his honored spot in the bedroom. Ultimately, he was placed in a closet and eventually buried under other “fossils.”

Somehow, though, Chandler managed to keep the doll. Despite moving away for college, moving back home to get married, moving away again and residing in three different apartments, two different states and four different houses, Bruiser remained – out of sight and out of mind, but always close.

“Hello,” Brenda said in a sing-song voice. “Earth to Chandler, do you read?”

Chandler looked up and shook his head.

“Sorry,” he said, clutching Bruiser in his right hand. “I guess I went on a sentimental journey there for a minute. Dad got me this when he took me to my first football game. It always makes me think of him.”

Brenda smiled.

“Well,” she said. “I can stuff the cotton back in him and sew him up. Make him good as old again – vintage, even.”

Chandler pulled the doll to his chest.

“Thanks, but … as silly as it sounds, I don’t think I want to sell it.”

Brenda knelt down and gave Chandler a kiss on the forehead.

“Good grief … I wouldn’t expect you to sell it, doofus,” she said. “But if you’re gonna display Bruiser in our new house, we need to patch him up. I want him to look good on our dresser.”

March Madness for the Ti-Cats

By 1983, my Hamilton Tiger-Cats fandom was pretty solid.

I had jumped on their bandwagon when Canadian Football League games were first beamed into my living room back in the early 70s, and my fondness for the Tabbies was holding strong.

With a black and gold color scheme and a hyphenated nickname born of the merger of the Hamilton Tigers and Hamilton Wildcats, what wasn’t to love?

But for a brief period that year, it appeared I might have to look for another side to support: Ti-Cats owner Harold Ballard threatened to fold the team.

Ballard wanted to move the franchise to Toronto’s Varsity Stadium after the Hamilton city council refused to renovate Ivor Wynne Stadium and grant him concession rights.

“We have been approached by the Tiger-Cats and all I can say at this point is that we have been asked what would be involved in moving the club to Toronto,” CFL commissioner Jake Gaudaur told United Press Canada on March 15, 1983. “We replied that the team would have to receive permission from the Toronto Argonauts and then from the CFL.”

Permission was denied.

The Argos quickly exercised their territorial rights, and prevented the Tiger-Cats from shifting 40 miles east and creating an intra-city arch rivalry.

Thus, Ballard put the club was on the chopping block, threatening to relegate the Oskee Wee Wee cheer (“Oskee wee wee! Oskee wa wa! Holy mackinaw! Tigers, eat ‘em raw!”) to the dustbin of history.

But 1983 was also the first season of the United States Football League, and Canadian John Bassett – who owned the Tampa Bay Bandits of the USFL – was chairman of the fledgling circuit’s expansion committee.

After failing nine years earlier to get a Toronto franchise in the World Football League (I wrote about Bassett’s WFL days last week), he believed Hamilton could have a future in the USFL.

“Hamilton is a great football city,” Bassett said in a Canadian Press story published on March 22. “It’s rich in football tradition and Ivor Wynne Stadium is acceptable. I know all kinds of people in Canada who would be willing to own a USFL franchise in Hamilton. I absolutely guarantee that it would take less than two days to get owners from the USFL to approve of Hamilton.

“If (Ballard) wanted to leave Hamilton, or if he wants to fold the Tiger-Cats, the USFL would welcome the opportunity to take advantage of the Hamilton football market. The people in Hamilton are sitting there thinking they can lose a football club, but they should know it won’t take very much to get another club.”

Ballard was a majority owner of the NHL Toronto Maple Leafs, so it made sense he’d want his football team in the same town as his skaters.

After being rebuffed by the city council, he had all the Ti-Cats equipment loaded on a van and moved to Maple Leaf Gardens.

“It’s all over,” Ballard said. “I’m changing the location of the team.”

Hamilton mayor Bob Morrow wanted to keep Hamilton a CFL city, of course, but reportedly expressed interest in the USFL if Ballard pulled the plug. After all, competing in a new circuit would be better than having no tackle football team at all.

Morrow announced that he had been charged with mediating the dispute.

“Council has authorized me to negotiate with the necessary people to keep the Ti-Cats in Hamilton, and that includes Mr. Ballard,” Morrow said in a radio interview. “I’m confident we can do that. We’ll do what we have to do.

“The bottom line is keeping our team. I’m looking closely at every aspect of our association with Mr. Ballard.”

If you don’t remember the “Hamilton to the USFL” talk – and the only reason I know anything about it is because I stumbled across it doing research – it might be because it ended almost as quickly as it began.

On March 23, the Hamilton city council – following six hours of debate – reached an agreement with Ballard. They approved a $300,000 contract package for use of the stadium, and Ballard got control of all concessions at Ivor Wynne.

“I’m glad to be back in Hamilton,” Ballard said after the deal was closed. “The politicians are lousy, but the people have always treated me fine. They even cheered me once.”

As intriguing as the thought of the Hamilton Hammers (or Hamilton Whatevers) participating in four-down football might have been, the original USFL played just three seasons.

Fortunately for gridiron supporters in Steeltown – and me – the Tiger-Cats play on.

The club is now owned by Hamilton Sports Group, with Bob Young the largest shareholder, and Ivor Wynne Stadium was demolished in 2013; the Tabbies currently ply their trade at Hamilton Stadium (originally Tim Hortons Field).

And all those years later, I’m still a fan – of both the Ti-Cats and the Canadian Football League.

Which reminds me … the Ti-Cats host the Argos in a preseason game on May 24. I should probably go ahead and start working on my Oskee Wee Wee cheer.