Like all good ACC ass-kissers on the ESPN payroll, Katz ranks five of the conference's teams in the top 8 (Duke 2, Georgia Tech 3, North Carolina 6, Wake Forest 7, Maryland 8), but his pick to win it all is Kansas from the Big 12. It's a little like picking the Eagles to win the Super Bowl, but whatever. After losing Emeka Okafor, Taliek Brown and possibly Ben Gordon, UConn drops to No. 10, just behind a certain orange-clad team from Central New York that cut down the nets just 52 weeks ago. Syracuse's ranking, however, is contingent upon Hakim Warrick staying for his senior season and junior Billy Edelin returning to the squad after missing the entire second half of this year with "personal problems" that have been kept well under wraps. Neither has confided in me their plans.

Among the biggest expected risers from this year's rankings are No. 4 Wisconsin, No. 11 Alabama and No. 15 Notre Dame. None of those schools, typically known more for their football programs, is among Ivan Maisel's college football preseason top 25. The only team to rank in the top 10 in both? Maryland at No. 8 in hoops and No. 9 in football. Texas (21, 6) is the only other school to rank in the top 25 in both sports.

Among the hoops teams expected to drop significantly are: Oklahoma State at 19, Texas at 21, St. Joseph's at 22 and Kentucky at 23. That's two of this year's No. 1 seeds not expected to do better than a 6-seed next year. Pittsburgh is out completely.

Other things to look out for next year:

• Can someone please take Mike Krzyzewski to task for being an embarrassing, raving lunatic? Imagine if Joe Torre acted like that.

• Will North Carolina be the first team to lose 10 games and be ranked among the top 10? With so many people having picked them to go to the Final Four this year, anything is possible.

• Will the team scheduled to play Stanford in the second round of the Big Dance have to suit up, or will it just get a bye?

Other Sports Links:

• Jerry Seinfeld Guests on WFAN in New York — A RealAudio clip of "Jerry From Queens" joining Steve Somers for about 15 minutes in the studio. Seinfeld has a beef with the part of the Mike & The Mad Dog jingle that goes, "They're talking sports, going at it as hard as they can." Funny stuff.

• ESPN's MLB 'Expert' Picks — Four out of 17 experts pick the Yankees to win the World Series. Think that so few would do so if their house was riding on it? Of course not. Jim Caple has neither the Yankees nor the Red Sox even making the playoffs. The consensus picks for major awards are Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols as MVPs, and Curt Schilling and Kerry Wood as Cy Young winners. Four different Yankees got at least one MVP endorsement (A-Rod, Giambi, Sheffield, Jeter) and two different Yanks were picked for Cy Young (Vasquez, Rivera).

• The Decline and Fall of ESPN's Franchise — Slate's Matt Feeney on how SportsCenter anchors haven't been the same since Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann paired. I thought that whole Dream Job show was embarrassing. A bunch of nervous guys in suits trying to sound hip and getting ripped by a ... Redskins linebacker? C'mon.

• Madden and Jetpacking — A Community Divided — A column on the controversial Madden 2004 maneuver that renders wide receivers nearly unstoppable. It's like giving Randy Moss a pogo stick and velcro gloves.