After the infamous 2006 brawl, the University of Miami and Florida International University decided to call it quits on their burgeoning rivalry. The football teams haven't played each other since, the baseball teams won't meet this season, and a match in December 2008 between the basketball teams was supposed to be the last time the two schools met in the big three sports for the foreseeable future.
Then some weird things happened: mainly a complete economic downturn and the signing of Isiah Thomas (two signs of the apocalypse according to some Eastern religions). So apparently Miami wants to keep the basketball rivalry going. This comes from Pete Pelegrin's FIU sports blog at the Herald (Pete, by the way, your blog is a hot mess, and I'm not sure if I mean that in a bad way, but wow, so much clip art).
It's kind of a strange position -- UM wanting to play FIU to leech a bit of notoriety and not the other way around, even though I'm 85 percent sure the Canes could beat the Panthers next year in basketball. For UM it makes sense -- there's very little travel cost involved and their home game would be almost a guaranteed sell-out.
But Pelegrin suggests that FIU play hardball and demands that if UM wants to play them in basketball, they have to play them in baseball and football too. Baseball -- sure, whatever; UM is gonna win four times out of five either way. Football? Never again. No, seriously, never again.
