Daily Sports: A Rivalry Sunday On Tap

It’s a Sunday of rivalries, with the NFL schedule highlighted by a battle amongst the brothers and a huge divisional grudge match, baseball’s schedule being marked by its most storied rivalry and a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race that opens under a cloud of bad feelings.

The daily sports agenda warms up slowly. CBS’ NFL coverage will show San Diego-Philadelphia to most of the country in the 1 PM ET window, as everyone gets their second look at Chip Kelly’s rapid-fire offense after their Monday night win in Washington to start the season. And speaking of the Redskins, they’re in Green Bay for what’s the quasi-main game on Fox. I say “quasi”, because coverage is split up throughout the country, but Lambeau Field is where Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are.

Chicago is the site of Bears-Vikings, but more importantly, the Windy City is the venue for the opening of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series postseason. TheSportsNotebook looked at this race yesterday, as the sport comes off a week of chaos and controversy, regarding which drivers ended up qualifying. ESPN televises the Geico 400 at 2 PM ET.

And let’s not forget baseball—just fifteen days left in the regular season, and the Kansas City Royals are one of six teams fighting for two spots in the American League wild-card game. The Royals, featured here on Friday, are hosting Detroit at 1 PM ET game on TBS.

We move on to the prized late afternoon spot on a NFL Sunday and find the Manning brothers. It’s Peyton’s Broncos against Eli’s Giants in the Meadowlands. TheSportsNotebook previewed Denver-NY Giants, along with three other marquee games of Week 2 (including Thursday night’s Patriots-Jets) earlier this week.

One of those marquee games is most certainly San Francisco and Seattle. The Niners and Seahawks are co-favorites in the NFC West, the NFC overall, dare we say even co-favorites to win the Super Bowl itself? Their coaches have bad blood going back to the days Jim Harbaugh was at Stanford and Pete Carroll at USC. Yeah, this game will be worth watching, at 8:30 PM ET on NBC.

The week in baseball makes its usual conclusion on ESPN’s Sunday Night baseball, where the Yankees are in Fenway Park to face the Red Sox. Game time is 7 PM ET. Boston has taken the first two games of this series and put New York in a bit of a bind in their own wild-card push. On Friday morning, I wrote why I, as a hard-core Sawx fan, have grown weary of this rivalry.