Since a brawl marred the Cincinnati-Xavier basketball rivalry two years ago, the two schools have met in the city's neutral site of U.S. Bank Arena. However, there is talk of the schools taking their rivalry back to the campuses.
I think that's a great idea and felt that the move of taking this rivalry off campus was a bit of an overreaction. Sure, placing it in US Bank Arena cooled some of the steam from the brawl, but I'm a big fan of rivalry games like this being on campus. I can't imagine Duke-Carolina playing in Greensboro in their meeting or Michigan-Ohio State football game being held in Cleveland (yes, I'm fully aware of Texas-Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl and such, but this game was supposed to be like that).
However, I am also a fan of maybe having it both ways. Why not a three game rotation of the game's site? One year in Cincinnati's 5/3 Arena. The next year in Xavier's Cintas Center. Then the third year in the neutral US Bank Arena. The two campus games will obviously get all the crowd on one side of the ball while the neutral game would hopefully bring a very even-ish crowd to the rivalry. I mean, we do see UNC travel to Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium and the Blue Devils in the Dean Dome ... but they tend to meet up in the neutral site ACC Tournament often. I think a rotation like this would be fun.
This has become a nice rivalry. It is taken very seriously in the city of Cincinnati and there have been some outstanding games. The game has a clever name complete with sponsorship (the Skyline Chili Crosstown Shootout). And with Xavier now in the Big East ... the conference Cincinnati was essentially thrown out of ... there is even footing for the program's national prominence.
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