Rivalry Week Hasn't Exactly Been What You'd Call Riveting

When ESPN calls it “Rivalry Week” I definitely feel that that means there will be a few larger-than-normal matchups and that I will be spending a lot more time than normal watching sports. So what happened this week?

Sure Duke hosted North Carolina on ESPN and USA hosted Mexico in soccer Wednesday night (two of the Best Rivalries In Sports that I named last February on CBS2.com – I will update that list here soon). But other than that, what big rivalries are there?

Louisville vs. Notre Dame and UCLA vs. ASU are supposed to excite me? Besides being league opponents and being pretty good, are either of these games actual rivalries? Is this the best they could do? Michigan State vs. Michigan was a decent one on Tuesday, but did anyone outside of Michigan care?

And even UNC-Duke and USA-Mexico were both a little lackluster.

Watching basketball at Cameron Indoor is often worthwhile and watching UNC play there is nearly always worthwhile. But this one never really grabbed your attention and refused to let go. It was a game of spectacular streaks (UNC’s red-hot start and then Duke’s I-wonder-if-they’re-cheating-somehow answer from behind the arc). But in the end, Carolina just out-ran Duke and slowly wore them down. No big shot, no real drama down the stretch. Great basketball, but nothing for the history books.

USA vs. Mexico was similar. The U.S. team was just better. They controlled the time of possession and wore down the Mexicans methodically. Mexico had a few decent chances to get a dumb-luck goal and steal a tie (exactly why soccer blows), but ultimately there was very little drama. There wasn’t even any of the normal US-Mexico unbridled hatred. Sure, the Mexican captain made one half-assed dirty play to kick our goalie and got red carded, but that was it. It was very hard to hate Mexico and normally that is really easy. They didn’t go for cheap shots and they didn’t take dives on every other play. In fact an American (Dempsey) was the most obnoxious player on the field. There weren’t even any really good soccer hairdos. Boring.

Is the Daytona 500 supposed to fire me up for the rest of the week? It isn’t even a sport and the only story I have even heard coming out of this is that Jimmie Johnson is going to drive without a brace on his injured finger. Really? Unless you have a broken leg, a broken arm, or a bladder problem, there really is no physical problem that a racecar driver should complain about.

The rivalry between Elgin Baylor and reality is a decent one. Right now, the two are set very far apart from one another. Seriously Elgin, we all appreciate what you did as a player (on and off the court). We all think that your firing was a little unceremonious. But ageism? Racism? You were underpaid during your tenure? How many winning season did the Clippers have in your 22 years? How many sub 30-win seasons? They had more sub-20 win seasons play playoff appearances. You should have been fired years before you were and thus were overpaid in that you even had the job!

Brett Favre vs. Retirement has been quite a rivalry over the past four years. It appears that while Brett was 2-0-1 going into this year, but retirement finally got a win. Last year he retired and unretired, so that counted as the tie.

Manny Ramirez vs. the Dodgers is a good rivalry playing out this week (though that will likely not go final by week’s end). For a while now it had begun to look like Manny had waited himself into a shorter, smaller contract but after Bobby Abreu and Adam Dunn have now both signed elsewhere and the Dodgers are left with just one slugger on the market, it looks like Manny may get closer to what he wanted all along. Was this Scott “Satan” Boras’ plan all along?

Speaking of Manny, Tommy Lasorda said yesterday that the Dodgers will be fine with or without him. I would like to follow this up with a snappy, funny comment, but it is pretty funny in and of itself, so I will leave it alone.

The L.A. Galaxy vs. Some Team In Europe. I don't really know what team David Beckham wants to play for because it is soccer and I can't believe I am bringing up two soccer stories in one post. Anyway, apparently he can't handle playing in the U.S. and wants to go back to play in Europe. What will American sports do without him?

Adam Morrison vs. Vladimir Radmanovic. A showdown for the ages. I think you have to say that Morrison wins this matchup because he was traded from basketball purgatory to the best team in the league on the virtue of being a terrible defender and an average shooter.

Perhaps the rivalry coming this week that will affect the most people for the longest period of time is Fantasy Baseball vs. Free Time. With pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training, many fantasy sites have opened for business and I for one have already opened my league. I opened up the league within hours of Yahoo!’s page going active and my league is #46065. I don’t know if that started at #0 or not, but either way, this amount of man-hours spent researching can’t be good for the economy.

There's Something (Weird) About A Man In Uniform

Watching the Dodgers-Marlins game yesterday, I saw a few shots of the Dodgers' coaching staff in the dugout and two thoughts kept popping into my head: these men need to eat better, and these men need to wear less tight-fitting pants.

Why do baseball coaches wear uniforms? No other sport does this. NBA and NHL coaches wear suits. College coaches are the same. In some sports, you will see coaches in polo shirts. At the most casual is the NFL coach, who wears whatever he wants as long as it is branded with the NFL logo - this generally equates to team warm-ups, jackets or sweatshirts, and Bill Belichick certainly tests the "whatever he wants" portion of this rule. But none of them wear a uniform!

So why baseball coaches? They are not players on the teams. So why do these fat, droopy men all wear unis? There are the Ozzie Guillen/Willie Randolph types who look like they could still play; there is Dusty Baker and his wrist bands who looks like he thinks he does still play, but then there are the Tommy Lasorda/Don Zimmer types who really need to just put on some slacks and a sweater and save us all from looking at things that would be cruel and unusual even at Guantanamo.

Baseball prides itself on being glacially slow to change so it must root back into the game's past. Perhaps it is from the turn of the 20th century when the team captain was essentially the manager, so they obviously would need uniforms on. Later, when teams started hiring non-player managers and coaches, those guys were likely former ballplayers and likely had a hard time giving up the game...so they wore the uniform.

That is perfectly reasonable, but don't coaches in every sport probably still want to play? Why doesn't Byron Scott hang desperately onto his playing days and wear sneakers, short shorts and a jersey? Football coaches in pads and hockey coaches in sweaters and skates would be a little silly, so it makes sense that those coaches wear something else.

So over 100 years later, Tony LaRussa still wears a jersey because some former ballplayer in 1908 had a midlife crisis? Connie Mack thumbed his nose at tradition and wore a suit. Why did others not follow his lead? Are the cleats, long socks, tightish pants and jersey that comfortable?

I get that it is tradition and I get where is originated from, but Major League Baseball eventually went so far as to make a rule that coaches on the field must be in uniform. No other sport invites coaches onto the field during a game, so maybe that is why other sports never adopted a similar rule. But again, why did baseball?

Would a coach waving a runner home from the box behind third tarnish the game if he was in a suit? Last August, MLB executive Bob Watson approached Red Sox manager Terry Francona before a game and reminded him that it was a league rule that he wear a jersey at games, and that a team jacket was not sufficient. Then during the game that day, Watson sent a security official to check under Francona's jacket to make sure he was wearing it...during an inning when the Yankees had a runner on base, not in between!

I get the desire to keep to tradition, but this is all a little bit weird. These are grown (often overgrown) men, and they look almost as silly as Josh Childress trying to pull off Buckwheat's afro (Josh, it's 2008 and you are not a teenager anymore, plus Ben Wallace already pulled this off far better). What does the bench coach need cleats for? Managers choosing to follow a tradition is nice and quaint and as baseball-ish as pitchers jumping over the foul line. But the league mandating tradition takes all the tradition out of it!