How the NFL Is Destroying Rivalries

I love rivalries in sports.

It’s like ketchup, for your french fries. You don’t necessarily have to have it to enjoy the fries, but it sure does make them a whole lot better if you do.

In sports it’s the competition that drives the game. And no other sport personifies competition better than football.

At every position it’s a battle between men to see whose will is to be broken first. Mammoth mountains collide like battering rams along the line of scrimmage down after down.

Backs explode into linebackers sounding like a shotgun blast when their pads meet. Corners play coy for several plays in a row to set themselves up for jumping the next out route that’s thrown at them.

But introduce a rivalry into the equation and the intensity of the competition multiplies exponentially.

Coaches revel in the importance. Players fight for a piece of the history. And fans live and die with each rivalry game. Everything is bigger .

But lately, as good as the product itself is, the NFL is losing its rivalries.

The Green Bay Packers vs. the Chicago Bears used to be a knock-down drag-out battle no matter what their records were. A Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins game was reason enough to cover your children’s eyes. These were not for the faint of heart.

But that was yesterday. Today’s NFL is parity at it’s finest.

It’s actually part of the overwhelming success the league has enjoyed of the last few decades. Everything is centered around making the playing field as level as possible. The worst teams get the best draft picks. The best teams play the toughest schedules the following year. The salary cap keeps all teams spending in check.

In a rivalry, both teams don’t always have to be great, but one of them usually needs to be better than the other. If both teams are great at the same time it’s God’s gift to football. But the NFL, for all it does right, continues to subsequently shoot itself in the "rivalry" leg.

Over the years the NFL has promoted its players over its teams. A marketing strategy of selling the stars of the game, over the cities of the teams, makes a lot of money in jersey sales, but diminishes the value of a rivalry. It no longer was the Green Bay Packers vs. the Chicago Bears. It was Brett Favre vs. Brian Urlacher.

When an Auburn/Alabama or Miami/Florida St. game is coming on, you don’t have to know who the starting running backs are. You just want to know what time the game starts. When Michigan is playing Ohio State, the only question is “where is it at this year” and not who the quarterback is.

It’s not an entirely flawed system. The NFL is certainly the most profitable league of them all, and for good reason.

It's referred to as "Any Given Sunday".

Any team can win, any week, against any other team. It’s parity. And it works for them. But while the NFL was getting so good at making all the teams equal, it was causing us to miss out on one of a sports fans little indulgences.

We love to hate really, really good teams, and love to root for their rivals to beat them.

College football rivalries drench fall Saturdays with their history. Fans talk all week long of it being “Florida Week” in Knoxville. Local stations play old classics featuring the two teams going head-to-head. Alumni come to town. Face paint is sold out. Message boards light up.

Win the game and you have a year of bragging rights. Lose the game and it's going to be a long lonely winter.

We just aren’t marking the dates for the Redskins/Cowboys game like we used to be.

Parity has also caused us to lose players we love to rivals. With the salary cap, you can’t afford to keep all the players you want, no matter how long they have played for you. I can sympathize with a Green Bay fan who can’t hate the Bears as much as he used to if their new running back was his favorite player last year.

Do you think former Seminole Derrick Brooks would have ever transferred to University of the Miami to play linebacker ? Could you see Michigan’s Charles Woodson in an Ohio State jersey?

Here’s a couple of suggestions to try and hold on to our NFL rivalries, while creating new ones.

Make all Monday Night Football games divisional matchups. We are lucky enough to see inter-conference games all the time in the NFL. We are not deprived in that aspect. So why not make the game of the week on Monday Night a divisional one? Let the entire country taste the different flavors of each city’s divisional rivalry.

Incorporate some type of "Larry Bird" rule to help teams hold on to their drafted players. I don’t know exactly what the numbers should be, but why not let a team resigning a player they drafted, to only have to count 90 percent of the contract against the cap, or 95 percent? Any type of relief would allow an organization some help it keeping its homegrown players.

In the meantime the NFL continues to put a quality product on the field. And in today’s economy the security of the league being around for decades to come is first and foremost important. Whatever they are doing is working.

So here’s to racing home from church to catch the first game on Sunday, and scrambling around in the back yard like Brett Favre throwing an overtime touchdown to beat the Bears.

But as a Vol fan don’t blame me if I am keeping one eye on “The Third Week in October” if you know what I mean.

Ahh…rivalries.