I know this is just the NCAA tournament graph. It would be interesting to see how it overlaps with the NIT. The NCAA tournament wasn’t always used to coronate the national champion. The NIT was the most prestigious tournament for decades. The NCAA tournament would select only 8 teams from specific regions of the US. Sometimes better schools were left out. A lot of the times the best schools declined to play in the NIT because it had more national exposure with Madison Square Garden.