Column: Sports world full of April Fools’ jokes

After the Utah Jazz traded Deron Williams to the Nets and the Virginia Commonwealth University Rams shockingly made the NCAA Tournament, the teams decided to trade places so the Jazz could have playoff experience this season and VCU’s players could get a chance to play in the NBA. They were finally outed when Markieff Morris from the University of Kansas recognized Utah’s Andrei Kirilenko on the court during their regional final loss to “VCU” and VCU was forced to play their actual team in the semifinals against Butler University. Jazz opponents noticed little difference, except that the new “Jazz” seemed to be trying harder.

“They were still better than the Cavaliers,” said Oklahoma City Thunder guard James Harden.

Indianapolis Colts president Bill Polian admitted this weekend that the quarterback NFL fans know as “Peyton Manning” is actually a robot developed by IBM in the mid-1990s to be the perfect technical quarterback with a minimum of inconvenient human emotion.

“We had no choice but to go public with the truth about Peyton,” said Polian. “Curtis Painter found out at the end of last year when Peyton’s battery ran out during a late workout and was threatening to rat us out unless we started him in six games next year. I mean, you’ve seen Curtis Painter play, right?”

Pending a decision by the league about Manning’s eligibility and — oh, yeah, whether we’re going to even have a season! Seriously! Come on! This is urgent and scary! — the Colts plan to split quarterbacking duties between Painter and newly signed signal-caller Brett Favre. The New York Giants confirmed that despite the news about “Peyton Manning,” their quarterback Eli Manning is “definitely real, but just sucks.”

Major League Baseball revealed that it will officially consider itself to have 29 teams after the New York Mets finally admitted that they have never actually been a real team. “We can’t believe it took everyone this long,” said former “Mets” manager Jerry Manuel. “How could you think that such a joke of a team could actually exist?”

Manuel pointed to many clues that should have alerted the baseball world that the Mets were a hoax, including that Mets “pitching great” Tom Seaver’s name (when written as Thomas Seaver) can be rearranged to spell “Mets a sham. Over,” that no pitcher on the “Mets” ever threw a no-hitter because they didn’t want to draw too much attention to themselves, that Mets “catcher” Mike Piazza’s name was just a fanciful rearrangement of “I Make Pizza,” and finally, that the very name “New York Metropolitans” is actually an anagram of “Eternal Wonky Impostor.”

As the Mets have now definitely never existed, their 1969 and 1986 World Championships have been nullified and awarded to the teams they defeated, the Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox respectively. As the Boston Red Sox now has broken the supposed “Curse of the Bambino” 18 years earlier than originally thought, Major League Baseball hopes that they will now become 18 years less annoying.

In related news, my name can be rearranged to spell “Granny Vibes,” “Gay Verb Inns,” which are all the rage for homosexual vacationers who don’t really mind what they’re doing as long as they are doing something, “Bring Ye Vans,” and “Briny Vegans.” Anagram generators are currently a nine-point favorite over theses in most Vegas sportsbooks.

Finally, Princeton men’s basketball coach Sydney Johnson ’97 assured fans that he is not actually leaving to become the new head coach at Fairfield. Say it ain’t so, Sydney.