A rivalry resumed

 So Indiana and Kentucky are going to play each other again in basketball, and that is all about setting the buckets universe right. It's ridiculous, after all, that they've spent the last decade-plus ducking one another. It would be like Notre Dame and USC ducking each other in football, or Army and Navy, or Michigan and Ohio State.

Rivalries are the staff of life in college athletics. Without them, they're just another bloodless business proposition, like the NBA or NFL.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "Aren't college athletics already a bloodless business proposition, like the NBA or NFL?"

Well ... yes. But stay with me here. 

My point is, without traditional rivalries, college football is just the Broncos vs. the Cardinals, and college hoops is Jazz-Nuggets for the tenth time this season. Rivalries give college athletics weight and texture, and is the only discernible difference anymore between them and the professional slog.

In college basketball, that means North Carolina-Duke. And it means Indiana-Kentucky, the only rivalry that approaches it. 

Why they stopped playing after 2011 frankly was stupid, with a bit of craven thrown in for good measure. 

They quit playing because of Watford For The Win, that magical night when Christian Watford hit The Shot II (the first Shot being Keith Smart's baseline J in New Orleans that won Indiana the 1987 national title) to upset the No. 1 Wildcats in Assembly Hall. Kentucky coach John Calipari apparently decided the Hall was bad juju after that, and Kentucky proposed the series be moved back to a neutral site, as it was when the two teams played in the old Hoosier Dome every year.

Indiana, on the other hand, wanted to keep the home-and-home intact. An impasse ensued, and the traditional December meeting was canceled.

"They scared!" Indiana fans said of Kentucky.

"THEY scared!" Kentucky fans said of Indiana. 

The Blob's position has always been that they were both right. Calipari was chicken because he didn't want to play in Assembly Hall every other year. Tom Crean was chicken because he didn't want to permanently play away from Assembly Hall. So, there you had it.

Two chickens. One dead rivalry.

Eleven years later, thankfully, it's back on again, or will be. Calipari announced at the SEC basketball media days an agreement has been reached in principle to resume the series in the 2025-26 season. A key piece in that is Indiana coach Mike Woodson, whose stated philosophy is that Indiana basketball ain't duckin' nobody anymore, and who also has a long-standing  relationship with Coach Cal.

That's not all, of course. Woodson, after all, played in this rivalry. He knows what it means. He knows how absurd it was that it wasn't happening anymore. Why let Duke and Carolina suck all the oxygen out of the traditional rivalry room?

"What's all this lyin' around s***?" one imagines Woodson saying, quoting Bluto from "Animal House." "We gonna play, or what?"

They're gonna play. 'Bout time.