LAHAINA, Hawaii -- Maui is forever scarred. Physically, spiritually, emotionally.
One of the more awe-inspiring and paradisal island landscapes on this planet was permanently changed in August 2023 when cataclysmic wildfires razed almost the entire town of Lahaina, a hamlet humbly posted on Maui's western coastline. The blaze -- brought on by especially dry conditions and accelerated by a superfluity of wind gusts -- came without official governmental warning well in advance, leading to the deaths of at least 102 people. It was the deadliest wildfire on American soil in more than 100 years. Almost all of Lahaina was seared; more than 2,200 homes, churches, businesses and other structures were destroyed. Approximately 8,000 residents had to relocate, many of them living in hotels for months. According to the United States Department of Commerce, the cost of the devastation was $5.5 billion.
Though the town has seen accelerated commercial revitalization in some parts, Lahaina by and large is nowhere near close to being fully rebuilt. In some ways, Lahaina can never again be what it once was. A tragedy of this scope will be recounted and remembered for generations, long after we are all gone. The landscape that girdles the town is still covered in singes of black, brown and beige where it should otherwise be green. Inside Lahaina limits, swaths of neighborhoods remain gray blank slates, either from housing foundations that lay in the char or new ones not yet built. Road barriers along Route 30 are scarred with rust-orange, giving evidence of how the flames rolled down from the upper elevations of Maui and pushed right into the Pacific Ocean.
Things do seem to be getting better, though. Look above from Route 30 and you'll see new houses are being built in rows, one after another. They're bringing character and color back. There are blue houses and red houses and yellow houses and green houses. There is that spirit. The Aloha Spirit. You can see what happened here, what's still happening here, what the Lahaina people are persevering through.
Less than two weeks ago, the first family moved back into the first house rebuilt in Lahaina. The second one will soon be next. Then another, then another. There are nearly 250 housing permits already approved, with hundreds more ready to follow in the months ahead.
Maui is forever strong. Physically, spiritually, emotionally.
The Maui Invitational, college basketball's most prestigious regular-season event after more than four decades of existence, has kept going despite its toughest stretch in history. Due to COVID, the tournament was forced out of Hawaii 2020 and 2021 and moved to Asheville, North Carolina, then Las Vegas. After coming back to Maui in 2022, the wildfires mandated a relocation to Honolulu in 2023.
Tom Valdiserri is the executive vice president and managing director of KemperSports, which has run the Maui Invitational for decades. He flew to the island in February, when it was still unclear whether or not the tournament would be able to return to Lahaina this year. Without disclosing who he was or why he was there, Valdiserri unassumingly asked locals -- at the airport, at hotels and restaurants -- about this famed basketball tournament that might be trying to get back to Lahaina in 2024. What did the people who live here think? Were they ready for it to come back? Was it too soon?
"Bring it, bring it, bring it," was the response, Valdiserri said.
After exceedingly careful consideration with the mayor's office, Lahaina's city council members and Hawaii's governor, the decision was made to bring the Invitational back to its proper home for 2024: The Lahaina Civic Center.
It was an unequivocal success for everyone except UConn, which provided one of the more unexpected storylines in Maui history by going 0-3 despite being the favorite to win the event as the No. 2 team in the country. Instead, Auburn won this year's title in eye-opening fashion and made its case for the patented Maui Bump, while teams like Iowa State, Memphis and Michigan State went 2-1 and got good résumé boosts. Beyond the basketball implications, the joy was what was most abundant. An air of gratitude and appreciation permeated the premises with every game, as febrile fan bases shuffled in and out of the Civic Center. After more than a year of devastation and rebuilding efforts, the Maui Invitational served as the first major event to signal a return to Lahaina as it should be.
You can't really get that just by watching it on television. Being here, seeing how tourists interact with locals, witnessing the exchange of respect, it's something unique in American sports. There is no other arrangement like it. A gym with a capacity of 2,400 -- a simple building that could have easily been phased out in the 1990s in favor of something much bigger and more modern -- has instead continued to play host to some of the best players and coaches in basketball history. Hall-of-Fame figures -- even ones still coming back to watch, just like Magic Johnson and Roy Williams did for this 41st iteration of the Maui Invitational -- give credence to Maui's unique communal aura.
"It tells the world Maui is open and alive and ready," Valdiserri said of high-profile games with high-profile attendees. "The mayor's been phenomenal. The state has been phenomenal."
That a major American sport continues to hold a crown jewel event at a building that is smaller than plenty of high school gyms speaks to college basketball's charm appeal -- and humble nature of the Hawaiian spirit.
"It's not just the fact that they're here and there's money coming in, economic development, but people see it as 'it's coming back,'" Valdiserri said. "Everything's coming back. They want this tournament. … It means a lot."
More than 100 students from the Kalama Intermediate School, in nearby Makawao, strummed ukuleles and sang traditional Hawaiian songs on Day 2 of the tournament. During halftime of the championship game between Auburn and Memphis on Wednesday, the Old Lahaina Luau dancers captured the attention of everyone in the gym with their riveting performance. Most of us mainlanders had no idea of the meanings behind the dances, but we were awestruck by it all the same.
"The Maui Invitational is more than just a basketball tournament," Lahaina mayor Richard Bissen said. "For over 40 years, it has made a significant impact on our community by driving our local economy, supporting community programs and youth initiatives and introducing visitors from across the nation with our unique culture and spirit of aloha."
This year the expectation is to raise close to or more than $24 million for the Lahaina community, Valdiserri said. That means the tournament went a long way to getting Lahaina back to a closer version of normal.
"Hotel properties have been operating roughly 50% through the year," Valdiserri said. "We're here now, they're about 90% and we're in the shoulder season … what that really means is people are getting back to work earlier than they normally would, because we're here. They need more restaurants, need more servers and bartenders, and hotels need more house cleaners and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, even the Westin this year, they bought inventory that they've never bought before. And the reason why they did it is because they want the world to know they're open."
The tournament was gifted something terrific in its anticipated return: the best Day 1 in Maui history.
"Monday's games, the consensus around those people, with other just general fans that I ran into: best first day of the tournament, we couldn't ask for three better games to tip it off," Nelson Taylor, Maui's tournament director, said. "So to be able to bring back and see those faces again and have them be excited to greet us. Just phenomenal."
The wildfires prompted more support for the Maui Invitational and the citizens of Lahaina and Maui than the area had ever seen. Taylor and others working to help the Hoops for 'Ohana auction (to benefit the Maui Strong fund) reached out to all 102 schools that have participated in the event for the past 41 years. The schools donated items to auction, in addition to Kansas, Illinois, Tennessee and Michigan State playing exhibition games to benefit the Maui Strong fund. It's always been a special event on the sports calendar -- the Monday tip-off symbolizing the unofficial alert that Thanksgiving week has indeed arrived -- but to witness this year's was to see an increased respect and appreciation.
"Collectively, through the auction and the broader college basketball community, we raised over $1.7 million for wildfire relief," Taylor said. "The response that we saw from the schools and the fans and willingness to support shows, I think, the position the tournament has within college basketball shows how important it is to them to support."
Maui faces a challenging future to keep top schools coming
What the Maui Invitational means to the island is a kinship. Its return to Lahaina was significant not just for the people of Maui, but because of the timing amid the modern landscape of college sports. For as memorable as the 2024 tournament was, questions loom over how the tournament will change later this decade, as economic forces in college sports continue to threaten the business model that built Maui into a behemoth.
There's a chance the 2024 field, which included four top-12 teams and could realistically wind up having as many as seven of its participants make the 2025 NCAA Tournament, is the last great Maui bracket ever.
There is a catch to the glamour and prestige of a Maui invite: Schools lose a lot of money for the opportunity to play on a huge stage in a small gym. Sources that played both in this year's tournament and have played in previous versions all said the price is easily north of $400,000, with some schools putting the cost well above $450,000 when taking charter flights into account.
"When you compare it to three games elsewhere with guarantees or [home game revenue], when you put it in that context, the disparity is enormous," one source said.
The bill also includes hotel rooms, meals, on-site events and ticket packages the athletic departments have to sell to fans, which schools pay for in advance. Universities don't recoup that money. Nobody that plays in the Maui Invitational winds up coming close to breaking even.
In a previous time, this was worth it. Maui was the biggest basketball TV draw the week of Thanksgiving and its competitors lagged far behind. But not in 2024. More games than ever are watchable, and with other events creeping in -- like the Players Era Festival, which is purportedly set to pay out nearly $9 million to the eight teams that played in this year's first-of-it-kind multi-team-event in Las Vegas -- Maui's business model can get threatened in a hurry.
"I have a really strong idea of the two sponsors who are on the floor and what they paid," Valdiserri said of Players Era. "And right now, we have a good idea, based on the pricing of their tickets and the fans that we're seeing … and so I don't see it. I don't see $8 million."
"I'm not disparaging them," Valdiserri added. "They're very interesting. It's a really unique (event) and it's obviously shaken the industry a little bit. … I think there's a lot of wait-and-see."
Even beyond the Players Era Festival, there are one-off events like the one Duke and Kansas played in Las Vegas on Tuesday, which benefitted those schools because they were paid handsomely to play in that game. In a world where coaches and athletic directors are desperate to make real money anywhere they can to raise for NIL, the Maui Invitational is, for now, opting to survive on its pristine reputation.
"We will continue to make sure that we make the appropriate decisions for the tournament to keep it relevant," Taylor told CBS Sports.
The format is not going to change for the next three years, organizers said. The teams that have agreed to play for 2025, 2026 and 2027 have done so knowing it will still be three games in three days with the same bracket arrangement Maui has been for most of its existence. That doesn't mean it can't change, but it's not expected to until at least 2028. This has caused some notable high-major programs to pass on considering Maui for the near-term, though not all.
"Schools that were here in '22 and '23 have already said we want to come back," Valdiserri said. "But I think with the way and the speed at which things are changing, we have to be looking at everything. There's nothing that can't be on the table right now, and that is including the format adjustments, the financial format. We have to look at new ways to bring sponsors on and create more inventory so that we're keeping it alive from a sponsor standpoint."
With a few notable exceptions, if Maui wants to continue to produce the best fields, it's probably going to have to break from tradition. It's going to have to figure out a way to make it so teams don't have to lose money to come to play. Come 2028, this might no longer be three games in three days with eight teams in the same bracket anymore. There could be four high-majors and four mid-majors. Organizers might have to start paying schools, or players, in an effort to making the trip as close to a break-even proposition as possible.
"As the marketplace changes, as the industry changes, we're not going to sit and stand pat," Valdiserri said. "We're going to do whatever we need to do to stay relevant without sacrificing who we are and what this tournament is to the fans, the players and coaches."
In recent weeks, I spoke with nearly a dozen sources about the pros and cons of playing in Maui. The common theme: It's such an amazing event, but the cost and the travel almost make it not worth it. Organizers charge schools a $35,000 marketing fee alone. The resorts the teams stay in are gorgeous -- and obviously pricey -- and for most part are paid for by the schools. Meantime, other events and/or showcases are providing hotel rooms at major discounts and paying teams tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to participate. The model is admittedly year-by-year in a business with tight margins, but a lot schools preparing for potential revenue sharing of their college athletes aren't going to be jumping at the chance to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars just to play three games.
"I'm not sure how MTEs can survive making schools pay that type of money," a coach who participated in the Maui Invitational told CBS Sports.
On Saturday, UConn coach Dan Hurley said he would never play in a three-day MTE again.
"Maui's the only one I've ever seen where they don't do anything for you, monetarily," another source said. "The fact you have to pay to go and they don't give you anything, it's unusual you have to pay to get into the tournament and they don't provide anything other than the games. ... It's like bowl games, man. It's been this way for so long, people want to be in the tournament, but it's not advantageous like before."
Valdiserri and Taylor told CBS Sports that, in addition to the 2025 field that's already been announced, they've received commitment from eight schools apiece for 2026 and 2027. The 2025 field is Arizona State, Chaminade, NC State, Seton Hall, Texas, UNLV, USC and Washington State. (In keeping with the tournament's origin story, Chaminade will continue to play in odd-numbered years.) The 2026 field is tentatively scheduled to include the likes of Arizona, BYU, Maryland, Ole Miss, Providence and VCU. Those fields are substandard to Maui's usual crop. (Arizona State and Washington State were backfills after Baylor and Oregon bailed and paid $200,000 to not be in Maui, instead opting for Players Era.)
Maui also comes with travel concerns that no other event carries. Coaches have lamented how the adjustment back to the mainland can have some lag on their teams.
"It's too much travel," one source told CBS Sports. "The next two weeks have a real impact on it. We love it .... but we don't think we're going to do it again."
Said another high-major source: "There are many prominent teams that feel like the three-day format in three days and travel distance and finances of Maui, Battle 4 Atlantis and some others need to adjust. The 2025 fields already shows signs of the shifting mentality."
One coach going on the record about his eagerness to return: Auburn's Bruce Pearl. His team won it this year and came in third in 2018, the same season the Tigers made their only Final Four.
"I will take Auburn back here anytime they'll have us," Pearl told CBS Sports after winning the title Wednesday. "Coaches, we are still old school and we're going to abide by certain traditions. And you know, as long as ESPN continues to put -- as long as we get the right time slots. In the sense that it won't be about NIL. There was Duke-Kansas during this week. That took a primetime spot. There's just more competition."
Pearl also told me he believes so long as television continues to make Maui a priority, and national media members continue to show up to cover the games, top-25-level schools will continue to want to be in it.
"It's an environment like no other," Valdiserri said. "And there are moments where it's louder than any place I've been, including Final Four, World Series, NBA, I've been to all of them, Super Bowl. There's nothing like it. You know, Bill Self said a few years ago, it's better than the Final Four in terms of the atmosphere, because the fans are IN it, and I think that's what coaches get off on, too."
But if it's going to remain special and keep bringing the likes of UNC, Kansas, Duke, Michigan State, UConn, Gonzaga, UCLA, Arizona and on and on, it can't continue as it's been. Maui will always be special, but there's no bequeathal ensuring it will always be the best. The Great Alaska Shootout was once a terrific men's basketball event that brought in top-10 teams and was a sibling November tournament to Maui. It disappeared in 2017 after a prolonged run of being a mid-major event.
"Nobody can predict the future," Valdiserri said. "I get where some things are heading. I also see some events that pop up really quickly, and then they realize, holy cow, that's just not working. And you know, we're in it for the long haul."
Sitting in that cozy gym on the hill on the northern edge of Lahaina, I can testify to the Maui Invitational's irresistible appeal once you're there, on the island, experiencing the drama and inside the deafening cement walls of that bare-bones gymnasium. A unique setting in American sports. And this year, with gratitude and renewed purpose -- both for Lahaina and for people on the basketball side -- it never meant more than in 2024.
So let's hope that some of the forces that have changed college sports for the worse don't come down on this event as well. If Maui needs to change its tournament format and money situation in order to keep getting top-10 teams playing each year, then do it -- and don't wait until 2028, because things can flip in a hurry in college athletics. The Maui Invitational is too good of a thing to see spoiled by the economic maelstrom that has sucked up a lot of what we love about college sports. Some things are so pure they need to be saved at all costs, few of them more meaningful than the beloved Maui Invitational.
