Long ago, somewhere around the time you broke your first New Year's resolution in a flurry of Haagen-Dazz and Oreos, dangerous stopped being an adequate word to describe college basketball's pole position.
Asking Jim Calhoun about his W-2s is dangerous. Tailgating LenDale White is dangerous. Taking tax advice from Barry Bonds is dangerous.
Being No. 1 is just plain stand-between-CC-Sabathia-and-the-training-table, accept-an-Evite-from Pacman Jones, asking for trouble
Yes, college basketball's top ranking long ago stopped being just dangerous.
Now it's just great.
This season, you'd have an easier time holding on to a bar of soap in the middle of a rainstorm. No team is unbeatable.
No team, that is, except whoever is lucky enough to play No. 1
There have been six different runs at No. 1, including two by Pittsburgh. If two more top teams fall, Octomom can name each of kids in honor of a flopped school.
There was North Carolina which left its defense home on Christmas break and promptly dropped its first two ACC games. Then came Pitt's first run, followed by back-to-back crashes by Wake Forest and Duke so disastrous the NTSB is still investigating. Connecticut took over from the Blue Devils, then Pitt dropped a sequel so bad you'd be forgiven for assuming a Wayans brother suited up.
Good luck to the next guy. We'd tell you you'll last as No. 1, but then we'd be blowing more smoke than Michael Phelps.
But your misery, next No. 1 team, is great for college basketball. And it should be great for a March full of madness and loony pairings.
Sure, it was interesting to see four No. 1 seeds make the Final Four last year, but it was exciting only if your other favorite teams are the Yankees and IBM, and you still get angry that Goliath didn't think about defending against the slingshot.
Now, if history is any guide, it's everybody else's turn.
To find a stretch where there were seven separate reigns at No. 1 in a 11-week period, as there likely will be Monday, you have to go back to 1995, when there were eight total reigns at No. 1, and 1994 when the top spot traded hands nine times. In those two tournaments, just two top seeds made it to the Final Four, both winning in memorable title games. The 1994 tourney gave us Bill Curley and ninth-seeded Boston College upsetting defending national champion North Carolina in the second round, and Tulsa running to the Sweet 16 as a 12 seed. Only eventual champion Arkansas represented the pole sitters. In 1995, only UCLA advanced to the Final Four from the top seed line and that was only with Tyus Edney's miracle dash against Missouri in the second round.
Nearly a decade-and-half later, without the senior laden teams of the mid-1990s, the results could be even more surprising.
After all, who among these top seeds is invulnerable? Not Pitt. The Panthers lost the No. 1 ranking in their first road game both times they held the top spot. They aren't the same team without rebound tree DeJuan Blair, and even with him they trailed bad-side-of-the-bubble team Providence by 18 at the half. Don't mention North Carolina either. Rocket point guards Tyrese Rice and Jeff Teague ripped them to blue-and-white ribbons in losses, while Duke took a halftime lead on the Heels with point guard Greg Paulus at the helm, a man whose 40-time would make global warming seem speedy..
It's certainly not Oklahoma. While Blake Griffin's still woozy with post-concussion symptoms ,the Sooners are just another team one short piece of contending and, without an elite defense might not have been a title contender to begin with. How about Memphis? The Tigers might steal a No. 1 seed, but their best win is over Gonzaga. How good is Gonzaga? Who knows, its best win is over Tennessee, a team that plays defense with the kind of intensity that makes your cat seem industrious. Connecticut? The Huskies lost to Georgetown, a team that's campaigning feverishly to be the best team in the storied two-year history of the Collegiate Basketball Invitational (that is, the tournament NIT kicks sand in the face of). Now they're down Jerome Dyson as well. How about Duke, Marquette, or a Wake Forest team that even Roger Clemens thinks can't keep its story straight?
Take the lessons of this season to hear and don't beat on them.
At least, unless they're playing No. 1
