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The National Invitation Tournament (NIT) is a men's college basketball tournament operated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

The association plays two tournaments each season. The first is played in November and is known as the NIT Season Tip-Off (formerly the Preseason NIT), and was founded in 1985. The second is a post-season tournament played in March, with its final rounds in Madison Square Garden in New York City, and was founded in 1938. In both common and official usage, "NIT" or "National Invitation Tournament" refers to the post-season tournament unless otherwise qualified. Both the pre- and post-season tournaments were operated by the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA) up until 2005, when they were purchased by the NCAA.

In 2005, the NCAA purchased 10 year rights to the NIT from the MIBA for $56.5 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit, which had actually come to trial and was being argued until very shortly before the settlement was announced. The MIBA alleged that compelling teams to accept invitations to the NCAA tournament even if they preferred to play in the NIT was an illegal use of the NCAA's powers, and to testify in its behalf had subpoenaed Texas Tech coach and well-known NCAA critic Bobby Knight. (This rule was instituted after Al McGuire's aforementioned snub in 1970.) In addition, it argued that the NCAA's expansion of its tournament to 65 teams was designed specifically to bankrupt the NIT. As part of the purchase of the NIT by the NCAA, the MIBA disbanded for the ten year duration.

So strong is the stigma of the post-season National Invitation Tournament as a consolation fixture that when teams with tenuous hopes of an NCAA Tournament berth lose away from home late in the season, opposing fans chant "N-I-T! N-I-T!" to taunt the players in the closing seconds. This is done regardless of whether the home team is headed for the NCAA Tournament or not. Irv Moss, a journalist for the Denver Post, once wrote of such a chant to a defeated team, "The three-letter word...was far more cutting than any four-letter word they could have hollered."

Since the post-season NIT consists of teams who failed to receive a berth in the NCAA Tournament, the NIT has been humorously nicknamed the "Not Invited Tournament", "Not Important Tournament", or simply "Not In Tournament". David Thompson, an All-American player from N.C. State, called the NIT "a loser's tournament" in 1975. It has also been seen as nothing more than a tournament to see who the "66th best team" in the country is (since there are now 65 teams in the NCAA Tournament). N.C. State, which had been the previous year's NCAA champion, refused to play in the tournament that year, setting something of a precedent. In succeeding years, other teams such as Oklahoma State, Louisville, Georgia Tech, and Georgetown have declined to play in the NIT when they did not make the NCAA tournament.

One such team was Maryland; after being rejected by the NCAA selection committee in 2006, head coach Gary Williams announced that 19-11 Maryland would not go to the NIT, only to be told that the university had previously agreed to use the Comcast Center as a venue for the NIT. The Terps were eliminated in the first round by the Manhattan Jaspers.

For other teams, however, the NIT is perceived as a step up in a program climbing from mediocrity or obscurity, and the response is more enthusiastic.

It should be noted that the NIT Season Tip-Off carries no such stigma (mainly because it's not a post-season tournament), and is one of many popular season-opening tournaments held every year around the country (alongside events such as the Maui Invitational and the Great Alaska Shootout).

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