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[QUOTE="nelsonmuntz, post: 3742731, member: 833"]
I would argue that through 1970, an NIT title should be roughly equivalent to an NCAA title.  I believe the 1970 Marquette team was the last big time program to turn down an NCAA bid for an NIT bid, but prior to 1970, the NIT was usually the deeper tournament because it was entirely at-large bids while the NCAA had mostly automatic bids, quite a few of which went to weak teams from weak conferences.  Look at some of the teams UCLA played before the Final Four to win its early titles.  There were a lot of wins over teams like UC Santa Barbara, New Mexico State and Santa Clara.

The NCAA Tournament didn't start to look like the modern tournament until the mid 70's, when it began significant expansion and also stopped the practice of regional bracketing in the early rounds (I can't find exactly when the regional bracketing ended).  In 1981 the NCAA added the 3 point line, in 1985 it expanded the tournament to 64 teams, and in 1986 it added a shot clock.  It is really hard to compare what happened prior to those three events with what happened after.

A championship from 1960 should be worth maybe half the value of a championship from 1990 or 2020.
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