There a lot of factors that play into creating a rivalry among teams. For starters, both teams have to be good. Even if there are two teams in the same city, it is hard to establish a heated rivalry if one team is always winning. Then there are attitudes. If players from both teams like to talk trash and sling insults at one another, arguments and fights are more likely to occur and help fuel the fire. Of course, you also need a long history of entertaining match-ups between two teams like Michigan and Ohio State or the Red Sox and Yankees. Oh yeah, and you also need to fight with the other team over strippers.
Sports Radio Interviews called our attention to a recent interview between Bart Scott and The Michael Kay Show in New York, during which Scott was asked if he senses a rivalry brewing between the Jets and Giants. If he wasn’t known for saying such off-the-wall things during interviews, Scott’s response would probably baffle you.
“Not at all,” he said. “Like I said when I was in Baltimore I could remember with the Redskins you had guys fighting over strippers and all kind of stuff. I don’t sense that here. I think it is a mutual respect. I think the town is big enough for both of us. I think we were just trying to make a statement that hey we wanted a little bit bigger piece of the spotlight because when I got here my sense was pretty much all Giants type of town. We played in Giants Stadium. We just want to get our piece of the pie.”
Don’t worry, Bart was asked to clarify what he meant by the strippers comment and he did just that.
“When you are in a small place like Baltimore and the temperature is relatively cold – hey you compete over the same chicks. That’s a football players favorite spot. Especially young football players. It was always a rivalry. Guys fight about hey that is my girlfriend and that’s my girlfriend, but here? Five million people, maybe more. There is plenty for everybody.”
There are a lot of reasons playing in a place like New York can be beneficial, but I bet you never considered the ample supply of strippers to be one of them. Special thanks to Scott for clearing that up for all of us.
