Interesting on wikipedia
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 will taunt the players in the closing seconds with the prospect of having to play in the NIT[3]. 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 taunt to a defeated team, "The three-letter word... was far more cutting than any four-letter word they could have hollered." [4]
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", "Never Important Tournament", "Nobody's Interested Tournament", "No Important Team", "National Insignificant Tournament," or simply "Not In Tournament".[5] 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). However, proponents of the NIT often point out that many of the NCAA Tournament participants would likely not win the NIT. Because 31 of the teams earn automatic bids in the NCAA Tournament, the claim that the NIT determines the "66th best team" can be seen as spurious since an automatic bid NCAA Tournament team may be weaker than a NIT Team.
David Thompson, an All-American player from N.C. State, called the NIT "a loser's tournament" in 1975. 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 Comcast Center as a venue for the NIT. The Terrapins were eliminated in the first round by the Manhattan College Jaspers. In 2008, however, Williams announced that if invited, the Terps would play, because it would serve as a chance to further develop six freshman players on his squad and to give senior forward James Gist more exposure.[6] At UCLA's famous Pauley Pavilion, there are individual championship banners for all 11 NCAA titles, various other banners touting many other NCAA and other tournament championships for other sports, but no mention of UCLA's 1985 NIT championship.