Rivalries

Tonight Duke host North Carolina in what the national media is calling the best rivalry in college basketball.

I heard Collin Cowherd on his ESPN radio show one day this week say that the only way to have a rivalry was when neither team dominated a series.

I think Collin is one of the best national radio host in America, but he is out in left field on this one.

I guess we have to determine what makes a good rivalry?

There has to be the element that if you win only one game all year that this is the one. Let's look at this past football season. If Northern could have beaten Rocky Mount would they have cared whether they had won only two games? On the other hand , it would have been disaster if Rocky Mount had of lost that game. Even though they would have been 12-3 on the year.

The Carolina-Duke game is big but, do you think Carolina wants to lose to State. If you look at State-Carolina series in football and basketball Carolina has dominated both. There is no better celebration for a State fan than winning against Carolina.

Locally since their inception Rocky Mount has dominated Nash Central, but how sweet it is for Nash central to beat Rocky Mount in any sport.

In order to have a rivalry there must be inter mingling between the schools and fans. People at work pull for the other side. Players play little league with each other. That inter office banter that my team is better than your team.

Any rivalry works better when the loser either loses the championship or is knocked out of the playoffs by their arch rival. So the team that is down spoils the team that is up with great pleasure.

A key component to any rivalry is that both sides care. If one side feels it life or death and the other could care less then it is hard to have a rivalry.

A rivalry can occur just because there is a mutual respect for each other. Last night during the Fike-Rocky Mount boys game Tashawn Mabry and Jeremy Adkinson for most of the game played man to man against each other. When all is said and done one of those two players will probably be the player of the year in the NEW-6. You could see it in their eyes as they went against each other that they wanted to prove to the other which one was best.

Finally the best rivalries are the ones where you have fun with each other between games. There is nothing better than thinking that you have upped someone for a whole year or

UNTIL THE NEXT GAME.