Now Rodriguez is off the couch and in the thick of the hottest rivalry in sports.
"It's a hot rivalry between Yevgeny Plushenko and Aleksei Yagudin," said Scott Hamilton, an Olympic gold medalist in 1984 and an analyst for NBC at the Salt Lake Games.
In the opening salvo of their red-hot rivalry, Carmelita Jeter ensured there would be no repeated shutout by finishing in 10.78 seconds Saturday, good enough for a silver medal.
Golden State had one last chance but Kevin Durant, who led all scorers with 36 points in his first game in the league's hottest rivalry, lost his balance coming off a screen and couldn't get off a shot as time expired.
Market experts and tennis officials say the women have what the men need: hot rivalries, family dysfunction, sex appeal and American dominance.
On Thursday night, the Red Bulls, hanging precariously to the last playoff spot, will face the Philadelphia Union in a game that is sure to add more fire to one of the league's potentially hot rivalries.
The hotter the rivalry, the more attention a sport would attract, he said.
Those efforts have further fueled the region's hottest soccer rivalry, which began in earnest when the United States knocked Mexico out of the 2002 World Cup in South Korea.
But there is no doubt that Iran remains a rival to Egypt for supremacy in the region, that the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran shakes Egyptians as well as the Gulf Arabs, that the Sunni-Shiite rivalry remains hot and hostile, and that Mr. Morsi intends for a newly democratic Egypt, led by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, to take a more assertive leadership role.
Mayweather Sr. and his brother Roger, a two-time world champion, make up a rivalry that is hotter than most inside the ring.
