Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning is as good as individual football rivalries get, and Sunday’s will be the quarterbacks’ 17th career meeting. But this one is bigger than the others, not because it is an AFC Championship Game with the Super Bowl at stake, but because it almost certainly will be the last time the two great passers face each other. The end.
We date ourselves with the rivalries we held special in our lives, and the only thing they all have in common is that they all were victims of time.
It was May 5, 1969, when Bill Russell faced Wilt Chamberlain for the final time, in a Game 7 of the NBA Finals.