Dave Gavitt, as usual, had the creative idea in his mind before anyone else.

During his commissioner days with the Big East, Gavitt noticed that the college basketball season always began with a trickle, not a flood. There is no Opening Day, no First Night in college hoops.

Gavitt always felt there should be some sort of official kickoff to the season. In this day and age of NFL dominance, there are too many good college teams that are not even noticed until January. The NCAA, of course, doesn’t seem to see this as any issue of consequence. But turn the TV on these first few weeks of the season and what you really see is empty seats, not only at tournaments in Puerto Rico and Orlando and Hawaii but also in too many campus gyms.

Leave it to the creative minds at ESPN to do something about that. ESPN has embraced college basketball since it went on the air in 1980, and no one promotes itself better. So we now have the Tip-Off Marathon, a 24-hour string of games that take place from Honolulu to California to Jersey City, N.J.

It’s nirvana for hoop heads everywhere. We missed the midnight game (UCLA lost to Cal-Fullerton) but caught the end of the 2 a.m. game (don’t ask) between St. Mary’s and San Diego State, saw ex-Friar Dwain Williams chest-bump an opponent at around 4:30 and get slapped with a technical in Hawaii’s loss to Northern Colorado, and watched parts of the 6 a.m., 8 a.m., noon, 4 p.m., 6 p.m., 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. games. It was hoop overload at its best.

The 6 a.m. game was certainly a big hit in Jersey City. Before Saint Peter’s took on Monmouth, the 1,200 fans heard a student belt out reveille instead of the national anthem. Kids wore pajamas to the gym instead of jeans. Saint Peter’s coach Jon Dunne set the alarms in his home for 3 a.m. “My wife wasn’t too happy,” he told the Associated Press. “I was a little concerned when I went in our locker room at 5 a.m. and our guys were dancing. I didn’t want to lose that energy we would need for the next three hours.”

St. Peter’s won, 58-34, but everyone went home a winner. Getting a similar kickoff event up and running here in Rhode Island every November would be a home run. The season certainly begins under the radar in these parts, what with the Patriots dominating the minds of sports fans right through playoff time. Shaking things up and holding some type of affair that promotes the game is in everybody’s best interests.

It’s probably not logistically feasible to get Providence, URI, Brown and Bryant (or some combination of the four) involved in a tournament every year, but it’s certainly worth a conversation among the athletic directors at each school. The World Vision Invitational last weekend at The Dunk was far from a big success, but for starters it wasn’t a dud. Having Bryant and PC on the same card for three days in a row was certainly better than watching the Friars drub three foes from schools no one has ever heard of.

How about a tourney that draws on sports-savvy corporate clients such as Cox Sports and CVS and moves between The Dunk and the Ryan Center at the start of the college basketball calendar every year? Sounds like a big hit. It’s an idea Dave Gavitt would be proud of.

kmcnamar@projo.com