There is absolutely nothing better in college basketball's regular season than city rivalry games. Recently, I had the good fortune to watch two of them on back-to-back nights, the well-known grudge match between Xavier and Cincinnati and the absolutely unknown tussle between two Atlantic Sun teams, Belmont and Lipscomb here in Nashville, Tenn.

On consecutive nights each of these games featured evenly matched teams and went into overtime amid a raucous crowd full of fans from both schools. I watched the Xavier-Cincinnati game on television, but the next night I went to a small gym near downtown Nashville to watch Belmont and Lipscomb in person.

Here's what you should know about Belmont and Lipscomb:

1. Their campuses are separated by 3.5 miles and essentially lie on the same road.

2. Both are religious schools. Belmont is Baptist and Lipscomb is Church of Christ. The Church of Christ religion does not allow dancing.

3. My friend Tardio and I had to buy standing-room only tickets because the 5,000-seat Lipscomb gym was completely sold out.

4. With the game tied and 6.6 seconds remaining, Lipscomb called a timeout with possession of the basketball. At this point, the entire arena was on the verge of riot. Children who could barely stand stood on seatbacks, adults who had children forgot they had children, and I actually had to catch one kid who almost fell while standing on a seatback. Even those confined to wheelchairs miraculously rose. Tie game ... 6.6 seconds remaining ... what song means victory for your team? It was all left to the arena deejay.

5. Then, out of nowhere, a melody I thought I recognized began to arise. No, I thought, it couldn't be. Then these immortal words sallied forth as Lipscomb's coach drew up a play. "Yo VIP, let's kick it."

6. Yep Vanilla Ice's own Ice, Ice Baby rang throughout the Lipscomb arena. Just the perfect selection. It even convinced me I could score. And let me tell you something: When you are playing your crosstown rival in a tied game and your team is about to inbound the ball, and Ice Ice Baby comes on -- even if your religion forbids dance, you dance.

7. Ultimately Lipscomb didn't win in regulation, but it did win 97-85 in overtime. And for the record, Lipscomb is stacked with athletes and may well terrify a big-school come March.

Seeing these two city rivalry games on back-to-back days left me desirous of seeing as many games like this each college basketball season as possible. Even if I have absolutely no connection to either school, I appreciate the passion brought about by city rivalry games. Even a southern boy like me enjoys watching Philadelphia city schools deck it out in the Palestra as part of the Big Five.

The cities of Cincinnati and Philadelphia are fortunate to have such a plethora of local rivalries, since most major cities in America aren't blessed with two evenly matched, top-caliber basketball schools. That's why it disappoints me when a city like Washington D.C. has two schools -- Georgetown and George Washington -- whose campuses are separated by about a mile and 24 years of refusals to play.

What makes the inability of the two schools to match up particularly galling is that the first game between the two was all the way back in 1907. G.W. and Georgetown played three times that year, with G.W. taking two and Georgetown winning one. The games were front-page news in Washington. Georgetown cemented the rivalry when it began the 1908 season by recruiting away G.W.'s best player, Fred Rice, by enticing him with enrollment in its law school.

Between that game in 1907 and the last game played in the 1981-82 season, Georgetown and George Washington played 93 times, with Georgetown holding a 54-39 advantage. Even without playing for 24 years, each school has still played each other more than it has any other school in the country. It's time for this series to begin anew. And what better time than next season, on the 25th anniversary of the rivalry's demise?

Rather than spend a ton of time analyzing G.W. and Georgetown's respective positions why the series hasn't been rekindled, it's time for each school to let bygones be bygones and, in a city of compromise, bring about a hoops detente. As someone who is used to being the water boy (literally), my ego is nonexistent and I am prepared to keep pushing for this for as long as necessary to make it happen.

Since these situations always seem to come down to dollars and lack of sense, I'm even going to outline a simple marketing plan that would guarantee each school money, attention and a sell-out audience. And really, it's quite simple: Fill the arena with a crowd made up entirely of students. Half Georgetown and half George Washington.

That's it. Seriously. George Washington's Smith Center seats about 5,400 people and is conveniently located in the heart of northwest Washington D.C. That means 2,700 Georgetown students could line up alongside 2,700 GW students. Two small private schools would be stealing a march on larger schools while at the same time bringing together the passionate fan bases of a city rivalry.

How much fun are Kentucky-Indiana basketball games and Georgia-Florida football games when the arenas or stadiums are evenly divided between fans of both schools? How much cooler of an experience would it be if college student-athletes played, shockingly, in front of an arena filled entirely with college students? For just one game, college athletics would reclaim the purity embodied in one school team participating against another before other students in our nation's capital.

Are you telling me that a national television network wouldn't jump over the opportunity to televise something as unique as this? I guarantee it would. I'm not even asking for a long-term commitment; I predict in only one game, the Georgetown-George Washington city rivalry would reemerge as among the best in the country.

This game would immediately become the best collegiate event in the city of Washington. As an added bonus, I'll even offer to reprise my old role as water boy and become the oldest manager in the history of collegiate athletics. And to make everything fair, I'll spend a half being ignored while offering water to GW athletes, and then another half being ignored while offering water to Georgetown athletes.

Instead of dilly-dallying around by talking to college basketball coaches and athletic directors, I'm going to request an interview with Georgetown president John DeGioia and George Washington president Stephen Joel Trachtenberg to pitch this idea. If we at ClayNation are responsible for nothing else, let this be it. Because when you get right down to it, anything less than the best is a felony.