There's no hype for it.  ESPN hasn't even had much promotion for the game.  Even Dickie V isn't as excited.  This game is now Average with a capital A baby!

Tonight at 9pm on ESPN we get to see the best rivalry in all of sports, Duke vs. UNC.

Argue that claim all you want.  I'll defend it.  This isn't a watered down rivalry like Yankees/Red Sox where the teams play 21 times during the year.  This isn't Michigan versus Ohio State that basically changed from a great rivalry to a mediocre rivalry once Michigan signed Rich Rodriguez and ended any since of tradition.

No.  This is better than any of those.  The game tonight is about two neighboring teams, separated six miles apart that play each other twice a year during the regular season for one reason.  Respect.

The game is about lineages of players and fans that are jovial when they win and distraught when they lose.  There's history, there's presence, and there's a future at stake with every game they play.  What makes this rivalry so special is that it doesn't matter the ranks of the team's playing or the caliber of players on the court.  What matters is that we have two teams that hate each other with two legendary coaches that dislike each other and you put them on a court for 40 minutes and you never know what is going to happen.

Everyone remembers Jeff Capel's half court heave to send the game into double overtime against UNC in 1995.  Do you remember that UNC was 16-1 and Duke was 10-9 with a 0-7 ACC record at the time?  Probably not.  You probably don't even remember that Duke lost that game in the second overtime.  That's what makes it special.  One play, in one meaningless game, is still heralded as one of the best moments in college basketball history and one of the greatest moments in this historic rivalry.

This is rivalry week.  We've seen some great games already including Kansas versus Texas and Villanova versus West Virginia.  Who cares though?  Those games were good, but they weren't moving, they didn't have anything memorable.  They didn't have any hype either and those were basically top fifteen teams playing against each other.

This game may not have the glitz and glamour of a big time matchup because the records don't say so, but it's still the biggest game of the college basketball season; at least until March 6th when they play again.

Rivalries are about seeing the love from the fans toward their team and the hatred of the fans toward the opposing team.  They're about history, tradition, pride, and respect.  They're about the name on the jersey, not the name on the back.  This is the rivalry that has all the intangibles that a great rivalry consists of and it will always be that way.  There have been blowouts in Duke/UNC games when both teams were top 5 teams, there's been close games when the teams had records nowhere near each other.  It doesn't matter.

This game is the greatest college basketball game of the year because even when we think we expect one thing, it always seems like we get something completely different; and that something different, is usually something special.

Sports teams are tough to figure out.  It seems easy to think a team is going to win it all when they have lots of talent, but that's not always the case.  You need depth, you need coaching, you need size, strength, talent.  You need a coach who will have their players' backs and players who want to win for their coach.

Most importantly, you need chemistry.

Chemistry is an often overlooked aspect of sports teams.  Most people think that a team is just talented and talent knows how to play together or a team gains chemistry as the season goes on.  The real question is what is the catalyst for team chemistry?

The Cleveland Cavaliers are the best team in the NBA.  They're on an eleven game win streak and will easily move that to twelve after tonight’s game against the New Jersey Nets.  How are they the best team in the league though?  Oh, did I mention that two of their best players are injured?

The Cavs don't have the best coach.  They don't have the deepest bench, or at least they didn't.  They may have the best single player of talent, but overall they aren't the most talented team.  Still somehow they are the best team in the NBA.  It's because they have the best chemistry.

What the Cavs have shown this year has been remarkable.  This is a team that have meshed their personalities so well that no matter who is on the court at the same time it feels like they've been playing together for multiple years.  They can have a starting lineup of Daniel Gibson, Anthony Parker, LeBron James, J.J. Hickson, and Shaquille O'Neal and I watch them and never once think that this team won't beat whomever they're playing.  If you don't like their antics in pre-game then who cares, your team isn't doing what the Cavs are doing.

Cleveland has had multiple injuries from various starting players throughout the year and it's actually made the team better.  It has given guys off the bench that never usually got much playing time, a chance to play legitimate minutes and most importantly, a chance to play with LeBron James.

Like him, love him, hate him, despise him; LeBron James is teammate in any sport.  A talented, unselfish, team player, who wants to better himself while bettering his team.  LeBron James is the intangible that no other team has.

We've seen in other sports how much chemistry plays a part of winning championships.  Would the Yankees have won the championship last year without clubhouse favorite Nick Swisher on the team?  I don't know, but they sure didn't win it previous years with all the talent in the world.  When you bring talent, depth, and solid coaching together with chemistry it's the perfect potion for a championship team.

Chemistry is the reason the Cavaliers have been able to excel even without Mo Williams and Delonte West.  It's the reason Shaq has been content with being on the bench in the final minutes of games.  Chemistry has helped create more depth on the Cavs and by doing so it created more talent on the Cavs.  Chemistry is a potion that rubs off on everyone around you.

So even if LeBron James is the sole reason for the chemistry, and he's the reason that other players have transitioned from bench player to role player to starter, the best part about the chemistry is that he has become a better player from the chemistry of the other players' as well.

I sure said chemistry a lot!

Hurricane Katrina is officially over!

That's basically the end result of the Super Bowl.  We're back!  Have you ever heard anything so outlandish?  A team wins the Super Bowl and the city is just automatically rejuvenated.

If this is the case then Roger Goodell should immediately create a NFL team in Haiti and stack it with all the pro bowlers.  Second thought, I don't think Haiti would even want Vince Young or David Garrard as their quarterback.

I can guarantee that everyone reading this watched the Super Bowl.  The game got great ratings.  It was the highest rated Super Bowl in 23 years.  That figure still surprises me though.  How in the Hell were more people watching Super Bowl XXI then the current year's Super Bowl.  It just has to be that there are more parties now so fewer televisions actually have the game turned on.

The Super Bowl was good.  Not great, except for the New Orleans hoopla.  Steelers/Cards and Giants/Pats were still much better Super Bowls.  I don't know, this one just had its ups and downs for me.  Maybe I looked to scrutinize it more, maybe there were just parts that just sucked.  Commercials were horrible, the announcers were annoying and terrible, halftime act I could care less about, and the game was entertaining.  All in all it was a solid, typical Super Bowl.

The Beginning

- So the opening of the Super Bowl was fine.  Queen Latifah sounded decent except she had to throw off her ear piece and not hear anything.  The choir or whatever was with her did fine as well.  America the Beautiful is always a good start.

- The Walter Payton Man of the Year award was very awkward.  They announced the finalists and then immediately showed Goodell, Walter Payton's children, and the Chiefs Brian Waters standing there holding a trophy.  They need to pull this one off like a Grammy winner next year.  Show each finalist on the screen in anticipation, a drum roll, and then Goodell opens the envelope to reveal the winner.  We could bet on it, plus you could see all the losers get pissed and be like "Screw Charity!  That's Bullshit!"

- I was amused by the coin toss.  I not only thought every team that calls it would select tails, since tails never fails, but I was also surprised any team would actually select to receive the ball first.  Actually the biggest surprise was that the NFC has won the coin toss the last 13 years!  We should all start a fund and bet it all on the NFC to win the coin toss next year.

- The announcers began to annoy me immediately once the game began.  Phil Simms was terrible and Jim Nantz was so excited to hear the Phil-osophy that he almost couldn't contain himself.  This may be the worst Super Bowl duo in the booth ever!

-  Did you hear Dwight Freeney had a bum ankle?  There's so many storylines to the Super Bowl and all I heard about was Dwight Freeney for the past week.  The ankle is 62% today!  Now down to 48.7%. Dwight didn't practice, Dwight's a no go, Dwight's in a golf cart, Dwight's now going for it.  I haven't heard so much of an outcry over one injury in so long.  Dwight Freeney is very good, but he's not amazing.  Did you know he only had 19 tackles this year?  There are players who had more than that in a single game.  Then again, 13.5 of those 19 tackles were sacks.  Doesn't anyone remember TO playing with a broken leg?  The outcry was much worse this year.

- The worst was the announcers with Dwight Freeney.  First play of the game, Dwight is double teamed, makes a spin move, almost sacks Drew Brees, and immediately Phil Simms chimes in about how the ankle is definitely causing problems.  Yeah, real big problems when you can get through a double team and almost sack the quarterback.  Moron!

- Peyton Manning looked ridic in the first quarter.  His passes were on point as usual and the Colts were dominating.

The Middle

- The Saints had a couple decent drives.  They couldn't really get the ball moving particularly well.  Thankfully for them they have a dependable kicker who was just booming 45+ yard kicks like it's his job.  Oh wait, it is his job.  Does anyone remember though that this is the same guy who was suspended for four games at the beginning of the season for PED’s?  I forgot, no one cares about steroids in football unless Barry Bonds decides to join the NFL.

- Smartest move of the game was going for it on fourth down.  People want to compare this to Belichick going for it against the Colts on fourth down, but the situation is way different.  You kick it and you get three points.  You make it you get seven.  The Saints missed it, but they also put the Colts so far back that it forced Jim Caldwell to be passive and go three and out.  Saints got it back and the roided kicker put another one through the uprights.  The three and out defeat by the Colts and the points on the board for the Saints changed the momentum.

- The onside kick caught everyone off guard.  Great call, great recovery, and most importantly, a great drive to make the turnover mean something.  If they don't get points the onside kick means nothing.  Another horrible announcing job here by Phil Simms where Jim Nantz clearly just received the info from his statistician stating that this was the first time an onside kick was attempted not in the fourth quarter.  Simms immediately tries to refute the statement by saying, "Are you sure?  I announced the Steelers/Cowboys Super Bowl and I'm pretty sure that Cowher went for one before the fourth."  Yeah Phil, the jobber statistician definitely provided incorrect data to you. Moron!

- Peyton responded.  Anyone who thinks Jim Caldwell decided to go for it on 4th and 2 is completely wrong.  Peyton didn't hesitate, flinch, or even look at Caldwell in his peripherals before he went to the line on 4th down.  Quick slant to Reggie, a score, and the Colts lead again.

The End

- The injury prone and hated Shockey played very well.  He made some big time catches and made the biggest one with the go ahead touchdown.  He needs some major props on this victory.

- The two point conversion changed the Colts whole outlook.  It went from a game winning drive to a game tying drive.  That's a pretty big mood swing.  That's like trying to hook up with a girl all night then finding out she's on the rag.  It just changes your mindset completely.

- Peyton did not look comfortable late in the game.  Earlier on he was going to Garcon and Collie.  Late in the game he kept looking for Reggie.  The dropped passes by Pierre Garcon definitely through him for a loop and he was forcing the ball instead of making the correct reads.

- Was it more fitting that the ridiculous Tracy Porter, with his Lombardi trophy etched haircut intercepted the ball for a touchdown to seal the victory?

- The last drive was meaningless.  The only good part was watching Manning totally baffled out there.  We saw him call a timeout and then pretend not to.  The ref blows the whistle and he makes a face like "What? I didn't call a timeout."  About five seconds later he does the Peyton lip curl basically saying, "Okay, you got me."

- The ending ceremony was very nice.  We will forever have images of Drew Brees and his one year old son.  Definitely a great moment and the picture below really symbolizes why the players play the game!

Charity is a daily effort for athletes and sports organizations.  It seems that each week a new event pops up where coaches or athletes are sporting a special patch or shoes that commemorate a cause.

They always have to have a catchy name like Coaches for Cancer, Assistants for Aids, Students for Swine Flu, or Ballplayers for Birth Control.  Okay, maybe the last one wouldn't be legitimate, but I think that would be a great cause to pursue in the future.

They usually entail some sort of color specific item being worn or used in the game such as all white sneakers by coaches, gold patches for Haiti on the jersey, pink bats in baseball, or just pink anywhere for breast cancer.

All this philanthropic work looks great from the outside, but is it really a good thing?

This past weekend we witnessed a beat down by the Georgetown Hoyas against the Duke Blue Devils in Washington D.C.  Everyone was excited for the event, not only because we got to see two top ten teams battle it out, but we also got to see President Obama enjoy the game in the stands and even take his turn as a sports analyst for a few minutes.

The other important part of the game was how the Georgetown STAND group and the Duke for Darfur group worked together to form the Darfur Dream Team.  The Darfur Dream Team is a combined effort by students and alumni from both schools to come together and raise money for the Darfur Dream Team's Sister School Program, a program that is helping to reinvigorate two schools in a Darfur refugee camp.  Definitely a great cause, but is a sports event the correct setting to display a message like this?

I know when I watched the game I didn't notice the message at all.  The only messages I got were the consistent cameo shots of Barack, Biden, Axelrod, and Gibbs enjoying a basketball game, nothing about Darfur.  I got the message that Duke played terribly and Georgetown played brilliantly.  I couldn't even bear to watch the final five minutes of the game because Duke was playing so bad.  I had no clue what the cause was for, where the money was going, or how it was brought about.  I only knew there was a cause because of the different shoes on the coaches and a patch on the players' jerseys.

All I knew was that this was a typical big time non-conference college game, which basically means that it's for some sort of charity event, the coach will be wearing sneakers, and I don't really care other then Duke better win or I'm going to be in a glum mood for the rest of the day.  The only thing I got out of the game was a disconsolate feeling from Duke losing and a annoyed headache from hearing Barack Obama and Verne Lundquist make partisan jokes about Barack being left-handed and that even he can go to his right once in awhile.  Somebody get these men off my television screen!

I don't think most people got the message, but more importantly I don't think we ever truly know what the message is about.  When we attend these events and a portion goes to charity, what are we really giving our money towards?  I know in the case of Darfur the money may never reach the schools that the Darfur Dream Team is trying to rebuild.  Darfur is extremely corrupt and some charities are too.  Everyone thinks that all charities are out for the better good for the people, but do they ever look to see how the charity has been built up.  The largest charities need money as well to grow bigger and to gain a national presence and this means that not all money is going directly to the people who need it.  Also, in Darfur much of the money that is meant to rebuild the schools will probably go as bribes to the colonizers just to allow them to be there.  Maybe a very small portion of the money will actually reach the starving citizens and the refugees who truly need it.  We never truly know who we are actually helping by giving money to charity.

So maybe sports events aren't the best platforms to get these causes across.  Most people who attend these games will see they helped a charity on their ticket and never think about the charity again.  People who are watching are not going to remember a blip during the telecast speaking on Darfur, but instead will remember Verne and Barack's lame jokes back and forth to one another.  

I think the biggest problem is the oversaturation of charity related sports events.  There comes a time when it happens just too much, too often, that we no longer think of what it's for and who it's benefiting.  I don't think about the cause when I see the event, I think about what item these players or coaches are wearing and how ridiculous they look in them.  I don't feel like one is more special than the other because I've seen a different event the week before, except there were different color shoes and different patches on the jerseys.

Maybe I just think too much or maybe I'm cynical in thinking that even if I did donate that my money wouldn't go where these people are telling me its going.  Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm right, but I do know that the message isn't getting across in the right way and just because we keep thinking we're doing something good, doesn't mean we actually are.

What's the record for most points in a NBA game?

What's the consecutive game streak number by Joe DiMaggio?

What NFL team has the most Super Bowl wins?

What's the record for most home runs in a single season? (Okay, I guess this one is debatable)

You know all those records.  You know the person who established them and the number that corresponds with them.

Why do we care about numbers so much?  Why can't we just witness greatness instead of trying to rationalize it based on statistics?  We can't because sports don't work that way.  We can't decide the winner of a game based on who looked better and we can't say someone was the best without having something to back it up.  Sports are all about numbers and there's nothing wrong with that.

So why is wrong if players know the numbers?

This past week Kobe Bryant passed Jerry West to become the Los Angeles Lakers all-time leading scorer. A great accomplishment and an unbelievable achievement at his age, but a record that was soiled by fellow teammates, coaches, fans, and the media.  Most athletes would be praised for such a remarkable stat, for Kobe Bryant, it's a distraction that he caused.  Immediately after the game we heard Pau Gasol speak about how the Lakers could finally go back to winning games.  We heard Phil Jackson say Kobe was distracted because he knew the record was approaching.  Fans and the media referred to him as selfish and lamented that all Kobe cares about is the numbers.  He wants to break all the numbers.

What athlete doesn't want to be the best though?

To be the best in the sports world you have to have the records.  You have to build up your resume and showcase how great you are based on your numbers.   The most points, most wins, most home runs, most playoff victories, most titles, mostly everything in sports is based on the numbers.

What's the most amount of points Kobe has scored in a single game?  What's the most amount of assists?  Most people can tell you the first one; hardly anyone can tell you the second one.

I don't know why it's different for Kobe.  Maybe people don't want him to be the greatest.  Maybe he still has the stigma of a bad guy to most folks and people can't appreciate how great he is.  Other sports and even other players we have no problem with the players going for the record.   Do you remember when A-Rod was going for 500 home runs and basically slumped for 20-some odd games?  We didn't care that it was affecting the team.  We still watched every night waiting for number 500.  We didn't care if Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa struck out three times in a game as long as they hit a home run to move towards Roger Maris.  We want to see records be broken, except when Kobe Bryant is breaking them.

I don't know if people have truly comprehended how great Kobe Bryant is.  I know I haven't until the past couple years.  There were always the excuses why he was so good.  He had Shaq on his team.  Phil Jackson is his coach.  The players that surround him are great.  No, the real reason Kobe Bryant is so great is because he works at being great.  He may work harder then everyone in the game and anyone who played before him.  He makes his entire team better as players and he takes the blame for every loss with no haste towards any of his teammate.  The Lakers lost to the Grizzlies on the day that Kobe set the Lakers scoring record.  Who was at fault for that Lakers loss?  Kobe Bryant, the guy who scored 44 points that game.  

If we care about the numbers so much then the players should be allowed to care to.  Will Kobe Bryant be the greatest player to ever play the game?  I don't know, but I'm sure we're going to try to determine it based on numbers.  Maybe we should forget the numbers for once, start experiencing sports greatness by how it's played and what it creates, instead of how many points and how many wins.  Maybe then people can appreciate Kobe Bryant for what he is, instead of what people perceive as what he's trying to be.

The best.