It happens ever few years that the talk begins about why the two Rapid City American Legion teams don't play each other in the regular season.

It usually happens in a year when Post 22 looks to be in rebuilding load and Post 320 is in an upswing. Whether those two developments are related is left to local sports pundits to debate, but this season seems to be one of the years where the talk has turned to more about why the two teams don't play than how the two teams are playing.

For those who think this is an entirely peculiar and isolated incidents out here in the Black Hills of South Dakota, think again. There are plenty examples of rivalries largely unrealized. Here's a few of my favorites.

1. Delaware vs. Delaware State

The remnants of the civil-rights struggle, fought over the history of the 20th century and beyond in the United States, left some bad blood on playing fields nationwide.

Nowhere is that more evident that in Delaware, where the University of Delaware refused to play nearby Delaware State in football for well more than a century.

The University of Delaware gets to play the evil empire role here. The long-established university actually forced the creation of Delaware State in the late 1800s because state officials didn't want to open its public educational facilities to blacks. However, with their hand forced by the Morrill Act, it created the "separate-but-equal" school Delaware State.

And then it refused to play them for the next 116 years, even though Delaware State rose to prominence in the same division in recent years. However, Delaware State managed to do so well last season that it qualified for the NCAA Division 1-A playoffs along with their in-state brethren.

The result? Well, it was no Disney movie ending, but here's to hoping that the eventual meeting in the playoffs will lead to future contests between the two natural rivals.

It worked for one other legendary rivalry snub.

2. Kentucky vs. Louisville

For nearly a quarter century, the legendary University of Kentucky basketball program refused to play intrastate rival Louisville. Like the Delaware-Delaware State rivalry, it was largely unrealized because of racial tensions between the two schools.

Whereas Louisville was the second team to start five African-Americans in an NCAA Division I game (the legendary Texas Western national championship team being the first), Kentucky University's patriarch Adolph Rupp was one of the most notorious racists ever to coach a big-time program.

And even after Rupp left, the tradition of "not" scheduling Louisville became entrenched. That is, until the two teams met in 1983 in a thrilling overtime classic that the Cardinals wrestled away.

After that game, state officials hurriedly worked to get the two teams to meet, which they still do once a year in a bragging-rights match to top them all.

3. The ABA vs. the NBA

Unlike their cousins, the AFL and the NFL, the professional basketball leagues of the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s never featured a game that mattered.

The football leagues created the ultimate matchup between top teams, the Super Bowl, which continued even after the two leagues merged in 1970. The basketball teams created a bunch of exhibition games that created little more than some extra revenue for the ABA teams, which hosted nearly all the games because the NBA didn't want to legitimize the existence of the ABA in front of their hometown fan base.

And that's exactly why the NBA refused to play the ABA in any games that mattered. Despite the fact the league was run by NBA legend George Mikan, that some of the game's most talented players were in the rebel ABA and that interest in the NBA suffered at the hands of the upstart league, NBA officials refused to legitimize playing the ABA in any game of consequence.

In the end, the ABA narrowly topped the NBA in the 150 or so exhibition matches, but finances forced the league to shut down in the mid 1970s. Still, remnants of the ABA remain in today's NBA, including regional favorite the Denver Nuggets, as a number of the upstart league's teams were absorbed into the NBA.

4. St. Thomas More vs. Rapid City Central/Stevens

Always a popular topic on the blogs among sports fanatics, the emergence of St. Thomas More as a Class A powerhouse in football and basketball has spurred plenty of talk about how the parochial school would do against the two, much bigger public schools, Rapid City Central and Rapid City Stevens.

In reality, a number of factors coalesce to prevent some of these measures. Here's a quick breakdown.

In football, the case is simple: Class 11AA don't play Class 11A teams. With conference schedules taking precedence, the only Class 11A team that schedules outside of its class is nearby Douglas, which often oscillates between the two classes and has long had difficulties competing at the bigger level because of a highly transient student population coming and going because of Ellsworth Air Force.

Also, the difference in Class 11AA and Class 11A football competition has continued to grow as the schedules have become more exclusive to competitors in the teams' classes over the years. That is to say, at the end of the season, even the worst of the Class 11AA teams not only have more players and are more physical than teams in the smaller class, they are often nearly as talented because of the tough schedule they play.

In basketball, the story is a bit different. Because teams don't need the numbers required to be competitive in sports such as football or track and field, it seems more natural that the teams meet.

Certainly, the competition level factors in some, but there is little threat of physical harm like there is in football, so the question remains: Why don't they play?

The answer rests partly in the South Dakota High School Activities Association's point system to determine playoff seeding and eligibility. In short, it simply doesn't pay for Central and Stevens to schedule many Class A teams. A Class AA team picks up more points for scheduling and losing a contest to a AA team than it will for defeating a Class A team, no matter how good it is.

Furthermore, it doesn't help in this age of open enrollment to further enhance a powerful program - even at a lower level - by playing them and taking the chance that they lose to the smaller school.

Should that prevent them from playing regularly when they are just blocks away and gasoline is now forever settled in the stratosphere? Probably not, but it may take a while for it to happen.

5. Nixon refuses to debate Humphrey or McGovern

OK, it's not sports related, but it is a matter of contests and willingness to take on opponents.

It's hard to argue Richard Nixon's strategy for presidential elections. In three tries, he debated once and lost, then refused to debate in the two ensuing presidential bids and won election in each.

In reality, Nixon ushered in the presidential debate era we are still in some 48 years later when he engaged John F. Kennedy in a televised debate. For Nixon, the debate was a debacle, casting him a poor contrast to the highly charismatic Kennedy, who pulled the upset win over the sitting vice president.

But Nixon was no political dummy, so when he ran for office in 1968, he simply refused to debate his opponent, Hubert H. Humphrey. The result: a Nixon victory. He followed the formula again in 1972 against George McGovern and achieved similar results.

Like in sports, however, it was the fans (in this case, the voters) who lost and the team (or candidate) that won. The difference, of course, is that in one case, it's an athletic contest and the in the latter, it's democracy.