Bring in the Clowns: Lame-Stream Media Looks Foolish for Preseason #1 Pick

However remote the prospect, Kentucky fans can hold out hope for a prompt turnaround because it has been achieved before. In coach Al McGuire's 1977 swan song, Marquette succeeded in the postseason despite losing an NCAA-champion high five home games, including its last three, to register the school's worst record in 10 years. But even if UK goes on to capture the SEC Tournament title and NCAA playoff championship this year under coach John Calipari, a smug media flopped more than equally-overbearing Marcus Smart (Oklahoma State) with its preseason group-think fawning over the Wildcats. Where was a "smidgeon" of bold enterprising analysis amid the diaper-dandy drivel and blue 40-0 T-shirts implying the 'Cats could go unbeaten?

Reflecting back on their pap, an insufferable groupie-like media desperate to be deemed "cool" was as unglued in the preseason as much as a dejected Calipari when ejected in second half of a loss at lowly South Carolina in the mediocre SEC. Sans point guard Ryan Harrow to sacrifice as a scapegoat, coach Cal is groping for a mature excuse comparable to fully explaining how two of his previous outposts (Massachusetts and Memphis) had their NCAA playoff participation vacated under his stewardship. There is simply no good explanation for possibly becoming the first preseason top-ranked team to finish out of the final Top 20 and first school ranked among preseason Top 5 in back-to-back seasons to finish out of both final polls. If all of UK's freshmen choose to return to college and finally focus on honing their less-than-professional skills, what will Calipari's ethical explanation be to the sizable number of undergraduate players who need to be cast adrift to make room on roster for the next greatest-of-all-time recruiting class? Will coach Cal consult again with cigar-loving President Clinton to possibly learn more about providing initiative to teenagers, interns, whatever?

Incredibly, Lindy's Yearbook was criticized last fall by Bluegrass bloviators for selecting UK (#2) and Louisville (#7) so low. Similarly, Doug Gottlieb, the lone cbssports.com "insider" failing to anoint UK as preseason #1, triggered one of the many websites needing Big Blue Nation drool buckets to claim it "understood the skepticism with ranking a team of freshmen first in a preseason poll, but when nearly everyone else in your profession believe the Wildcats are America's best team, doesn't it seem a little crazy to put them way down at No. 7 (randomly drawing teams from a hat)?" Well, how about way down out of the Top 20 after an over-hyped frosh class failed to live up to billing, enabling the "droolers" to shift their skill and moonlight helping support log rides at amusement parks across the country? No, what's big-time crazy is that, just like their respective websites, the preseason UK narrative from the slobbering stenographers all read virtually the same.

Discerning an equivalency to Ronan Farrow on training wheels, let's revisit the following widespread predictable preseason pundit plaudits replete with amateurish and snobbish historical perspectives on what comprises the "best":

Associated Press - "To say a ninth national championship is this season's goal is an understatement considering Kentucky has social media and blogs suggesting an unbeaten season is possible."

Athlon Sports - "On paper, it is the best of Calipari's five straight national-best recruiting classes. In theory, it is the greatest haul of all-time. Frontcourt is as impressive a collection of talent as you'll see. If competition fuels a team that is among the most talented the sport has ever seen, who knows what might happen? Calipari isn't shying away from 40-0 talk."

C.J. Moore, Bleacher Report - "Calipari turned the most frustrating team he's ever coached (NIT first-round defeat at Robert Morris) into the most admired by signing what could go down as the greatest recruiting class of all-time. From the NIT to the top. From flawed to flaunted."

Chris Dortch, Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook - "Top to bottom I'm not sure any team in history is as talented."

Jeff Borzello and Gary Parrish, cbssports.com - "Calipari brought in arguably the best recruiting class in the history of the sport. What Calipari is enrolling is literally the best collection of prospects anybody has ever enrolled. Ever. In history. That is not hyperbole. How could anybody not rank Kentucky No. 1? The question isn't whether UK is capable of winning it all as much as it's if UK has a chance at completing a season without losing at all."

Andy Katz, Jason King and Myron Medcalf, ESPN - "Kentucky's epic recruiting class make the Wildcats the preseason No. 1. A lot of folks have been asking if Calipari's latest batch of one-and-dones can win a national championship. My answer: How could they not? I don't understand any arguments against that (Kentucky as No. 1 team in America)."

Rob Dauster, NBC Sports (CollegeBasketballTalk) - "Kentucky is so ridiculously talented. Have we ever seen a recruiting class as strong as the one coach Cal landed this season? Have we ever seen a team amass quite the amount of talent Kentucky has amassed this year? NBA teams might as well get a six-month lease on an apartment in Lexington for the season. Kentucky is much closer to being the Kentucky of 2012 than the Kentucky of 2013."

Mike DeCourcy, Sporting News - "What the Wildcats really needed in order for their overwhelming influx of young talent - the No. 1 prospect in the 2013 class at four of the five positions - to help the team confidently challenge for an NCAA championship was physical maturity in the frontcourt along with at least a hint of veteran leadership. And they've got that now."

Luke Winn, Sports Illustrated - "The Wildcats will take aim at the Fab Five's legacy. Julius Randle, a LeBron-like freight train headed to the rim, could very well be national player of the year."

Eric Prisbell and Nicole Auerbach, USA Today - "Calipari's successful formula has been to rely heavily on freshmen, and this season should be no different. Getting ahead of ourselves? Perhaps. But some folks are going further, predicting an undefeated season or something close to that. Let's look at the "five" teams most likely to put an end to any talk of a perfect season."

Jeff Eisenberg, Yahoo Sports - "Unprecedented recruiting class might give Calipari his best chance yet to chase perfection."

We don't expect the national press to be perfect but if you don't believe there has been a dramatic dumbing down of America, then you've never seen man-on-the street segments on Jay Leno's Jaywalking, Jimmy Kimmel making fun of the news or Watters' World on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor. Unfit for much presidential "R-S-P-E-C-T" (even with Aretha singing in the background), the extent to which the ignorance stems from peer-pressure media shortcomings contaminating the scene is debatable. For those who believe the quality of play on the court is not as good as it was several decades ago, the same premise could also apply to press coverage. This is not exactly the golden age of sports media. Where is the next Dick "Hoops" Weiss or budding John Feinsteins and Alexander Wolffs of the digital/publishing world?

There are ample reasons why the majority of Americans fail to have confidence in a misguided mass media reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly. It only takes a few minutes assessing Twitter incest and the flock of fake followers to reveal much of the follow-the-pack pathetic press doing little more than kissing butts like a pack of puppies in a municipality without a dog catcher. A "climate change" hoopdom needs is a whole new set of "experts." Based on their across-the-board Kentucky preseason prognosis reminiscent of Pravda, the shameless sports scribes should be kicked in their cans because they don't care to budget a fair share of basketballs for the job and are as derelict in their duties as U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Dem.-Nevada) failing again to offer a budget while calling American citizens liars for citing Obamacare deficiencies and domestic terrorists if they don't bow down and worship his colossal failures. If you like your (health-care) plan, then you can keep your plan (if counselors keep "doing the Lord's work" luring "knuckleheads" according to the First Lady)! If you like your (preseason hoops) previews, then you can keep your error-prone analysis (if "knucklehead" readers fail to do enough work to move off their butt and find more incisive impartial observations)!

We can't get any Keystone pipeline leadership, but our entitlement society can at least look forward to POTUS' postseason prognostication expertise via name-dropping ESPN manufacturing news. The "Audacity-of-Hype" Oval Office NCAA bracket selections will be as authoritative as the media's preseason kissing of the championship ring in coach Cal's back pocket. Outmaneuvered by "Peacemaker" Putin, shouldn't the West Wing be a mite more selective in how it spends its precious "FUNNYORDIE.COM" time? If so, the selfie-taking/Bush-league-blaming hoopster-in-chief wouldn't exhibit a Sgt. Schultz "I-know-nothing" routine while chronically pleading ignorance about less vital matters such as the Benghazi terrorist attack, IRS targeting of conservatives, Fast and Furious gun-running, health-care exchange ineptitude, NSA spying on allies, Justice Department snooping on national media, etc. But we can count on the know-it-all left-leaning fourth-rate estate to be there holding the powerful accountable, providing as many candid answers as I-R-Mess public servant Loser Lerner pleading the Fifth while grazing at the public trough on her six-figure retirement.