How Are You Going to Celebrate Rivalry Week?

Who needs UNC and Duke?  Rivalry Week is about celebrating all rivalries, no matter the size, no matter the shape.  Do you honor only your sobriety during National Safe Boating Week?  Neither does anybody. 

That’s why I’m glad some of us have veered sharply away from our laser-like focus on Chapel Hill, and tried to concentrate on other rivalries.  You’d be missing a lot if you only paid attention to the biggest, best, most thrilling, and rewarding rivalries.  Nobody said commemorating rivalries was easy, or even that you had to think about currently existing arch nemeses.  

I present to you USC-UCLA.  Pat Forde seems to think that the next Pac-10 rivalry is buin’ between the Bruins and the Trojans.  It could happen.  They have the all-important “cross-town” distinction upon which so many great rivalries have fed.  Plus Arizona and Stanford are failing to impress of late, leaving the door open for a West Coast feud.

Interesting, indeed, interesting.  But let’s face it, I’ll think about anything to get my mind off of getting tickets to the Duke-UNC game at StubHub.com.   

Permalink - Posted in General on February 7, 2007 - Post a comment

Duke-UNC: Rivalry on the Hard-Ware

If you’re like me, then you can’t wait until sports are contested between robots, or at the very least cyborg-human-animal hybrids.  Until that day, I’m going to have to drive my fossil fuel car to an actual-reality stadium and watch mortals squabble about over some rivalry that will someday be calculated down to irrelevance.

The good news is that ESPN is already well on the way to the dim future.  They have instituted a predictive devise using a simulation game played out between two computerized opponents, simulating the Duke-UNC game on EA Sports’ NCAA March Madness ‘07.  The result was that North Carolina won, and a couple of ESPN interns have now been outsourced to technology. 

I have no idea of the accuracy of the video game simulation, but I can darn well tell you that StubHub.com will be betting you’d rather catch a Duke-North Carolina game in that outdated ol’ Cameron Indoor Stadium than see it played between the confines of your X-Box.   

Permalink - Posted in General on February 7, 2007 - Post a comment