Northwestern was not my safety school.

In fact, I usually tell people it was the only school I applied to, but, in truth, U. Chicago deferred me early action. Not that it mattered. NU and I were saddled together in a shotgun early decision marriage. We promised each other commitment. NU overlooked my not being a prodigy, I overlooked NU not being Harvard, and neither of us had to consider whether we could do better. And we’ve been very happy together.

So it’s always been hard for me to relate to the griping of Ivy League groupies. Yale didn’t want you. Northwestern did. Fact is, there was someone better than you.

In the case of the NCAA tournament, there are at least 68 teams that are better than us, but the National Invitation Tournament will probably still want us.

We could sulk about this. We could begrudgingly drag our feet to the NIT and make snide remarks about its (and our own) inferiority. Or we could skip on over to that second-tier competition and be awesome at it.

It turns out that being a second-tier beast is often the way one becomes a first-tier contender. In 2009, Baylor came in second in the NIT to Penn State, but scored a No. 3 seed in the first round of the NCAA tournament the next year. Ohio State won the NIT in 2008 and grabbed a spot at the big dance in 2009. In the past four years, half the teams to play in the final NIT matchups went on to grab some March Madness the following years.

All this correlation is speculative to be sure. But, again, I’m in Medill, not MIT. My answer is to correlate some more stuff. Powerhouses like Duke and North Carolina have had long stretches of consistent NCAA tournament appearances. These periods have been prefaced by good performances in NIT tournaments. Northwestern’s NIT participation in years past has been sporadic and short-lived. We’ve lost in the first round for the past two years, as well as 10 years prior. If I had to guess, I’d say “the year” is likely going to follow at least one strong NIT showing.

Together, Northwestern and I can become a power couple. I can study hard, graduate, be successful, donate some of my riches to NU, drive up the endowment and hopefully make NU too good for riff raff like I was in high school. This will further boost my earning potential and the cycle will continue, so eventually NU will be no one’s safety school. In this vein, the right attitude about today’s NIT could mean the right seed in tomorrow’s NCAA.

The onus is not just on the team to build a record of success. It’s on the fans. So maybe this isn’t “the year.” It certainly hasn’t been the year for Indiana, either. But the amount of Hoosiers who filled Assembly Hall on Saturday to watch their team lose dwarfed Welsh-Ryan attendance on its best days.

So, maybe you see this as our safety season. I see it as the right fit. Regardless, like college, the season is not going to last forever, but the way we approach it will be instrumental in determining future success.

Co-sports editor Ali Elkin is a Medill junior. She can be reached at [email protected]