Every good movie, story, mini series has a great protagonist and antagonist. We love to root for a hero and we enjoy even more hating the villain. Sometimes we hate the villain so much our skin begins to crawl when he appears on the screen. We root even more for his demise than we root for the hero to succeed. In the rare case the villain is so likeable that the roles reverse and we start cheering for the villain who is truly the underdog.
Good rivalries will have the underdog role switch from year to year or at least over the course of a decade. As I write this blog, I am preparing for Thanksgiving in which one of the great rivalries in football face off once again. The NY Giants and Dallas Cowboys will once again be the featured matchup even though the competition will only be for who is worse. Competition is what makes sport urgent. Even with all of the statistics and analytics anything can happen on “any given Sunday.” (Which, by the way, was one of the great sports movies.) Unfortunately, some teams in some markets have such a huge following they seem to not even make an effort to be a winning team. Both New York and Dallas will make money regardless of their record.
Dallas, in a brilliant marketing strategy, labeled itself America’s team. And the Giants, well they are from New York, one of th largest sports markets. Unfortunately, they are not that interesting to watch. In fact, these two teams have met only once in the playoffs. Yet, we watch because those are the teams that are on and it is Thanksgiving and it is the only way to get out of talking to our annoying relatives. There was a time when it was a great game to watch. “While the Giants dominated the Cowboys in the first few years of the rivalry, the Cowboys picked up steam and took control from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, winning 17 of the 20 meetings between the two teams in the 1970s. In the 1980s however the Giants struck back, and the rivalry has been relatively even handed ever since with intermittent spurts of dominance (the Giants in the late 1980s and the Cowboys in the early 1990s).” see Wikipedia
All that is to say, there are much greater rivalries in both individual and team sports. Rivalries push the other to be better, to accomplish more than ever before. This week, Andy Murray, once considered part of the “top four” of tennis (a nod to the greatest British tennis player, though nowhere near as good as the “top three”) announced that he will be coaching Novic Djokovic, arguably the greatest tennis player of all time. Along with Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer their accomplishments far eclipsed the other greats of the sports. It was because the pushed each other, they made each other better. And the friendship that Nadal and Federer have off the court shows that the sport and not their egos was what drew them to each other. They enjoyed each other and we enjoyed watching them.
Who can forget Joe Frazier versus Muhammad Ali, giants of pugilism (I have always wanted to use that word with a straight face.) Boxing was elevated and certainly Muhammad Ali was one of the first to use his platform, even before it was called a platform, to make an enormous statement about world events when he refused the draft over Vietnam and went to jail, losing critical time from his career. (Unlike Mike Tyson, arguably the greater boxer, who went to jail for criminal behavior. )
In 1971, both Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier were undefeated champions (in Ali’s case, actually, former champion) who held legitimate claims to the title of “World Heavyweight Champion”. Ali had won the title from Sonny Liston in Miami Beach in 1964, and successfully defended his belt up until he had it stripped by boxing authorities for refusing induction into the armed forces in 1967 (though he was still recognized as the Lineal heavyweight champion). In Ali’s absence, Frazier won two championship belts, knocking out Buster Mathis for recognition as champion in five states (most notably, New York) and Jimmy Ellis, who had won the World Boxing Association’s world title by winning a WBA elimination tournament, to replace Ali as the acknowledged, unified world champion. Frazier was plausibly Ali’s equal, which created a tremendous amount of hype and anticipation for a match pitting the two undefeated fighters against one another to decide who was the true heavyweight champ. (See this amazing video. It is just 15 minutes) Ali/Frazier taught the great lesson that great narratives make great rivalries.
Of course, there is rivalry between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona that has its origins from real world conflict. “The biggest rivalry in European, if not world, football began in earnest with the Spanish Civil War. Before the war, Barcelona and Real Madrid were little more than football clubs.” Read more
In basketball, the Lakers Celtics have proven to pit two dynasties against each other while highlighting some of the great individual performances. Athletes like Larry Bird and Michael Johson, elevated their teams while creating the legacy of “Showtime, Kodak, the Hick from French Lick and Larry Legend.” (More on nicknames in a blog to come.)
In baseball, “this is the rivalry.” This rivalry began in 1901. To date the Yankees and Red Sox have played 2,320 times. Over the course of the rivalry, the Yankees maintain a slight lead with a 1,257–1,049–14 record against the Sox (don’t ask me how they tied 14 times)…. The Yankees and Red Sox have no shortage of reasons to hate each other. The best reason was finally resolved in 2018 after the 86 drought came to a close when the “Curse of the Bambino” was finally lifted. In 1919, the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
In college basketball the great competition, like other geographically born rivalries, Duke-UNC Basketball propelled each team to greater heights and produced some the greatest professionals, like Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Vince Carter and Grant Hill. Each program creating National Champions and individuals who forged in the battle of college sports became great champions in their own right.
Competition can be healthy and we are all inspired by the athletes, who are motivated to excel, push each other to do even greater things. We watch as athletes’ laser focus brings them to do things we think are impossible. Such as a Tiger Woods shot described by Cameron Morfitt as,
A single grain of sand.
Had it slipped between Tiger Woods’ 6-iron and golf ball, one rogue grain could have sunk his hopes of winning the RBC Canadian Open in 2000, becoming the first since Lee Trevino in 1971 to win golf’s Triple Crown – the U.S., British, and Canadian Opens in the same year.
So was it the ultra-fine margin? The stakes? The absurdly improbable physics of the shot itself?
Yes. Yes. And yes. All of these things compelled Scott Verplank, among others, to call it “the greatest shot I’ve ever seen in my life,” Woods’ 218-yard masterstroke from the wet sand at the par-5 18th at Glen Abbey. Woods’ caddie Steve Williams would return to the bunker once the commotion had died down, still struggling to get his head around what he’d seen. Others have made the same pilgrimage and tried to visualize what Woods had, tried to feel what Woods felt, for this was magic.
However, equally we see competition boil over into nasty displays of violence. Most often in hockey, we see fights break out and penalties awarded in varying length depending on the seriousness of the violence. In football leading to fouls called unsportsmanlike conduct. Yet, in some worlds we can understand how competition can lead to outbreaks on the field, ice or pitch.
However, when it goes beyond the arena then it has gone too far. Rivalries are supposed to raise us all up. However tribalism can be lethal and we should know where to draw the line. The list of rivalry induced violence is long. Sometimes they happen in the stands and sometimes they spill out onto the street. Sometimes the heat is turned up before the teams even begin to play. Sometimes they are the result of an ugly play on the field and sometimes they are the result of other things that are going on in the world.
As citizens of the world and just plain fans of sports we must find a way to elevate each other not degrade one another. Sport should bring out the best in us and not the worst.