To all who think New Year's Day and March Madness are mutually exclusive, we have this news bulletin:

Alabama is the Associated Press poll's No. 1 basketball team in the nation.

That's Allla-bamaaa, as Keith Jackson used to say. Bear Bryant U. Where the backup deep-snapper tends to be better known than the starting point guard. The epitome of the term "football school."

	The best "quarterback" on the Notre Dame campus? Look on the hardwood where Chris Thomas directs the Irish offense.

A university that claims 12 football national championships of varying types sits on top of Hoopsworld for the first time. Ever.

In fact, given the recent Tidal traumas endured by King Football, you could argue that Bear U. is a basketball school. There is no NCAA probation and no postseason ban on the hardwood, and the basketball coach hasn't fled for Texas A&M anytime recently.

This breakthrough to the top of the rankings, even if it lasts only a few more days following Alabama's loss to Utah on Monday night, might just be enough to jolt Crimson Tide fans out of obsessing over football recruiting for a spell. Or not. But even if March and April mean spring football first and NCAA Tournament second in Tuscaloosa, the basketball team has made Alabama a legitimate two-revenue-sport school.

And not the only one currently impacting the rankings.

Mississippi State. Texas. Oklahoma. Florida. Pittsburgh. Notre Dame. LSU. All traditionally think pointed ends before round sphere, kickoffs before tipoffs, Corso before Vitale. Yet all are currently ranked in the AP Top 25 in basketball.

New Year's Day sees the Longhorns in the Cotton Bowl -- but really now, is quarterback Chris Simms anywhere near as exciting to watch as point guard T.J. Ford? The Sooners play in the Rose Bowl -- but they were in the Final Four more recently than they played for the football national title. Ditto for the Gators, who were 2000 national runnersup in hoops and haven't played for the football title since 1996.

Pitt is an old-time grid power -- but the Panthers are ranked No. 2 in basketball by both the media and coaches. Notre Dame had a return-to-glory season to reach the Gator Bowl, but isn't point guard Chris Thomas the best quarterback on campus? LSU beat the No. 1-ranked football team in America in 1997 (Florida), but it beat the No. 1 basketball team (Arizona) just a week and a half ago.

The phenomenon is especially fresh in the SEC, where basketball was, is and likely forever will be the stepchild sport. (Unless there comes a day when every team in the league is placed on probation for football lawlessness.)

The SEC is made up of 12 schools. Ten are football-first. One is a basketball school (that would be Kentucky). One (Vanderbilt) is an institution of higher learning that dabbles in athletics.

The SEC is the kind of place where they name the basketball gym after an old football coach. (The old Barnhill Arena at Arkansas. The converse is true at Kentucky, where the football field is named after a former basketball man, C.M. Newton. H.G. Stegeman, whose name adorns Georgia's barn, coached both football and basketball.)

And it could be argued that the SEC is the kind of place that will hire an African-American basketball coach (Tubby Smith and Rod Barnes presently, Nolan Richardson and Wade Houston previously) but wouldn't dare entrust King Football to a black man (337 coaches in SEC history, all of them white) for fear of booster backlash.

But with LSU rising up to join Alabama, Mississippi State, Florida, Kentucky and Georgia, half the league is ranked in Jeff Sagarin's basketball top 31.

Roy Kramer wouldn't recognize the place.

No conference rakes in more cash than the SEC, which profits fabulously from the BCS and all its bowl tie-ins. That can trickle down to basketball, which can mean more money for facilities, coaching salaries, recruiting budgets and, of course, payola. (Just kidding about that last one. We think.)

It's also true that as SEC schools have come to care more about hoops, they've kept more talent at home. Denny Crum's best Louisville teams of the 1980s were built on small-town Southern boys from Georgia (Pervis Ellison, Derek Smith) and Mississippi (Lancaster Gordon, Kenny Payne, Charles Jones). Good coaches with good programs don't let that kind of talent leave the state these days.

So as we sit down for pigskin overload, remember that many of the schools you're watching are getting it done in both major sports at once. In fact, we've seen it enough to wonder why it isn't getting done at some other spots.

Why is Duke's basketball program unsinkable and its football program unliftable? Why is it that Cincinnati can dominate Conference USA in basketball but remains mediocre in football (nice loss to North Texas in the, um, New Orleans Bowl)? How can Arizona churn out Pacific-10 heavyweights every year in hoops but remains incapable of a league title in football? How can Kentucky feel good about its football program when the coach goes 7-5 and leaves for ... Baylor?

But those are questions for another day. On New Year's Day, keep an eye out for school colors you'll see often come March.

Pat Forde of the Louisville Courier-Journal is a regular contributor to ESPN.com