For two seasons, Connecticut and Tennessee even played twice a year, an unprecedented home-and-home series between non-conference combatants. Execs in Bristol probably wondered aloud why they could not play a third game at a neutral site. After all, the 2004 national championship game between the two is still the highest-rated college basketball game, men's or women's, that ESPN has ever televised. The 2002 meeting between the two schools at the Final Four in San Antonio drew the largest crowd in the sport's history (29,619) while a 2006 regular-season game in Knoxville drew the largest regular-season audience (24,653).

While more programs pose realistic threats to UConn's and Tennessee's bilateral dominance, these two continue to dominate the sport. From 2002-2004 the Huskies, led by, in my opinion, the best player in the program's history, Diana Taurasi, won three consecutive titles. It appeared a fait accompli that Auriemma, 54, would catch Summitt, 55, in terms of national titles, if not career wins (she started at Tennessee at age 22, after all).

But then the Lady Vols landed their own Taurasi in Candace Parker, who led Tennessee to its seventh national championship last April.

And that is where ESPN comes back into play. The most heavily recruited high school player in the last decade since Taurasi and Parker is Maya Moore, who grew up in Georgia. That's Pat Summitt country. But Moore opted for the hibernal serenity of Storrs over Knoxville. Someone at Tennessee learned that Connecticut had arranged for Moore, while she was on an unofficial visit to Connecticut during her senior year, to take a tour of ESPN's studios (an experience that is open to the public; in short, a Connecticut official simply placed a phone call that Moore could have placed herself).

The NCAA was called in to investigate. Connecticut received a "secondary violation," which is tantamount to your mom reminding you to pick up your wet towel off the floor. And there it might have died. Summitt, Auriemma, the NCAA and ESPN all were aware of this "secondary infraction," though the public was largely in the dark. But then Shelley Smith, an ESPN reporter, was assigned a story on the rivalry earlier this month. Smith knew about the infraction and informed Auriemma that she would include it in her piece.

Women's NCAA Tournament results Bracket  |  Scores  |  Schedule EAST REGION UConn 66, Rutgers 56 MIDWEST REGION Tennessee 53, Texas A&M 45 SOUTH REGION Stanford 98, Maryland 87 WEST REGIONAL LSU 56, North Carolina 50

"What purpose does that serve?" Auriemma asked on his radio show two weeks ago. "It's typical: 'Let's drum up some interest before the NCAA tournament starts and hope these two meet in the finals so we can get boffo ratings' at the expense of Maya Moore."

Make no mistake, both Auriemma and Summitt understand the sway ESPN has on potential recruits. On Tuesday, ESPN announced that it had purchased the top girls prep basketball site, gurlzhoop.com. And so every slight, or perceived slight, by the network registers on each school's seismograph. If Summitt is peeved that ESPN provided a tour to Moore while she was visiting UConn, might that be related to Summitt appearing in a new "This is SportsCenter" ad right now? Maybe, maybe not.

Granted, Summitt is the most successful coach in the history of women's basketball -- and imagine how much more successful she'd be if Auriemma had gone to law school as he once planned -- but you can imagine that Auriemma's apostles wonder why he does not appear in such an ad.

Similarly, supporters of Summitt probably roll their eyes as they watch Connecticut play their first two rounds of the tournament in Bridgeport, Conn., with Lobo as the sideline reporter (Tennessee, a No. 1 seed, had to face Purdue in West Lafayette in their second-round matchup).

It all adds up to this. Two Hall of Fame coaches, both still in their prime, are just never going to be one another's Facebook friends. There is mutual, albeit grudging respect. Each keeps the other from winning even more national titles, but each helps the other earn more money (both earn more than $1 million per year) due to the interest their rivalry has fueled in the game.

Tennessee and Connecticut. The Lady Vols and the Huskies. Our only chance to see them play is in the national championship game on April 8 in Tampa. And as much as all of us who follow women's college hoops yearn for that contest, none of us want to see it happen more than the folks at ESPN.

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