In 1869, in Cardiff, N.Y., -- just south of Syracuse's Carrier Dome where this week's 17th-ranked men's college basketball team plays -- some farmers digging a well announced they found petrified remains of a giant man. (No, he was not the first big stiff Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim recruited.) He was 10-feet tall. And the fellow who spoke for the discovery, a cigar maker named George Hull, started charging 50 cents to see the Cardiff Giant turned to stone.
But a Yale paleontologist, who inspected the find, debunked it as nothing more than a tall tale after finding it was made of gypsum. The would-be amateur anthropologists confessed to fashioning fiction.
Yet, people continued to flock to see the hoax and -- now at the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., -- still do.
After all, we love fakes. Elvises. IDs. The Colbert Report.
How about the college basketball poll?
We crowd around flat screen televisions in the family room or our favorite watering hole to bear witness to the best team in the nation as divined by the AP or Coaches poll. But upon further examination, we discover that it isn't Duke, which fell from the top perch in mid-January upon losing to an unranked Florida State team. It isn't Ohio State, which lost its first game and the No. 1-ranking on Saturday at 14th-ranked Wisconsin's gym. It isn't Kansas, which ascended to the throne after Ohio State slipped and abdicated it roughly 48 hours later in Manhattan, Kan., to unranked Kansas State.
The only thing phonier than the college basketball poll is the preseason college basketball poll. Michigan State was ranked second before the season tipped off. It was unranked Tuesday and just 6-6 in Big Ten play when it tipped off in Columbus, Ohio, against the just-deposed Buckeyes.
Pardon the digression, but the Buckeyes' freshman star, center Jared Sullinger, posted on his Twitter account after the Wisconsin loss stating that in the storming of the court by Badgers' students, a fan spit in his face. Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan said videotape showed no evidence of Sullinger's allegation and spat (pun intended) back Monday in a conference call: "All I know is, we won the game. Deal with it. Our end, their end, it was well played. I heard a lot of comments about how the teams went after one another. Great for the Big Ten. And our fans were absolutely fantastic. What a great day, especially for our students."
What Ryan should have said was that he looked into Sullinger's complaint and could not verify it but was sorry it may have happened and would remind his student body to behave with sportsmanship, which is what Maryland coach Gary Williams told his student body last week before Maryland hosted its hated rival Duke. The anonymity provided by the Internet culture has emboldened too many cowards and the only thing that will rein them in is consequence. Ryan failed that teachable moment just as The Palace security in Detroit that let an out-of-bounds' heckler get away with a low blow against LeBron James. Enough already.
Now back to the regularly scheduled column.
The entire turnover at the top of the Top 25, and beyond, isn't evidence that the voters don't know what they're looking at. It is just an indication that it is becoming increasing difficult to discern the real No. 1 during the season. The entire turnover at the top of the Top 25, and beyond, isn't evidence that the voters -- my colleagues on press row and the men who actually run the teams -- don't know what they're looking at. It is just an indication that it is becoming increasing difficult to discern the real No. 1 during the season.
The reason most everyone points to is that potentially dominant college players only stay in school for a season before they bolt for the NBA in order to earn the type of money the men who coach them in college do, but college players aren't allowed. How much better would 22nd-ranked Kentucky be this year with John Wall playing lead guard as a sophomore rather than with the NBA's woeful Wizards and center DeMarcus Cousins causing havoc in the SEC as a second-year player rather than on his new team, the Sacramento Kings, as an NBA rookie? The Wildcats would be the team to beat this year in college, our national semi-pro league, and I don't think they'd lose the distinction.
Instead, there isn't a team to beat this season, but a lot of teams you think for a second are -- until they get beat.
"March Madness is right around the corner and a season that originally looked like a bettors dream, with only a couple elite teams, has suddenly turned into a gamblers nightmare," Vincent Tapoglia III, who is an editor for CasinoGamblingWeb.com, wrote Tuesday. "The top teams no longer have the invincibility."
I think there is another reason for the evening of the playing court, too. There are more talented, if not extraordinarily talented, players in college basketball now than ever. All the players know one another from summer AAU tournaments. They've played against and with each other since they were who knows how young. They have no fear of a single opponent or team.
"Gamblers may have had their fun early this season," Tapoglia stated, "but now is the time for parity in college basketball."
That isn't all bad, at least not for those who try to make a living on what Las Vegas peddles. This is setting up for a potentially great NCAA Tournament. There should be more competitive games and closer endings with a greater propensity for everyone's favorite buzzer-beating winning shots than ever before. I feel more certain predicting that than what team should be the top seed headed into the tournament.
We don't really need a poll anymore. The tournament seeding takes care of that. It measures all the important metrics like record against strength of schedule.
But we're like the folks who flocked to upstate New York to see the Cardiff Giant. We've been sucked into what has become one of the great hoaxes of the end of the 20th century and start of the 21st. The No. 1 basketball team in America is mere myth until the NCAA Tournament concludes the first Monday night in April.
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