With his stature in local basketball, sideliners say that Tab Baldwin is like the Pope: When he talks, everybody listens.

Last week, however, he made a statement that made me jump out of the bed.

According to the noted American-Kiwi mentor, the battle between his school, Ateneo de Manila University, and De La Salle University remains as the biggest, fiercest rivalry in Philippine basketball.

For me, the old magic and intensity displayed by the players of both Ateneo and La Salle almost 20 years ago are no longer there. Instead of pushing, taunting, punching and getting into each other’s skins every time they collide, the Blue Eagles and the Green Archers are now chummy with each other, completely removing the notion that they are the modern-day versions of Crispa and Toyota, whose rivalry in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) threw them to jail following a massive brawl at the height of the Martial Law era in 1977.

Ateneo and La Salle are perfect protagonists.

The sophisticated and affluent Jesuit missionaries founded Ateneo while the wealthy and educated La Salle Brothers established La Salle.

They were also handled by the biggest tycoons in the country with Manny Pangilinan of the Smart-PLDT Group bankrolling the basketball program of Ateneo and Danding Cojuangco, the chairman of San Miguel Corporation, financing La Salle.

Their list of alumni was impressive as well with politicians, lawyers, educators and other big-shot professionals showing up at either Araneta Coliseum or Mall of Asia Arena to cheer their hearts out straight from either the august halls of the House of Representatives or corporate boardrooms.

As they say some 20 years ago, the rivalry between Ateneo and La Salle was a red-letter day for these alumni that they go there not just to watch this intense rivalry unfold, but also to see and be seen. And in between cheers and chants of “One Big Fight” or “Animo La Salle,” there were corporate personalities sealing a deal or rubbing elbows with their fellow alumni to further expand their network.

Actually, the Green Archers were the first who got on top.

With Franz Pumaren as mentor, the Green Archers dominated the league from 1998 to 2001 through their airtight full-court defense, kill-or-be-killed mentality and impressive recruitment program that gave them the likes of Carson City playground hero Mike Cortez, Willy Wilson, Carlo Sharma, Manny Ramos, Mark Cardona, Rico Maierhofer, Ryan Araña, Joseph Yeo and BJ Manalo, who was pelted with a chorus of jeers for moving from Ateneo to La Salle.

The following year, the pendulum of power shifted to Ateneo.

With legendary mentor Joe Lipa plotting a program that aims to end Ateneo’s 14-year title drought and Joel Banal executing it, former Blue Eaglets Enrico Villanueva, Magnum Membrere, Wesley Gonzales, Epok Quimpo and Larry Fonacier found a way to break La Salle’s vaunted full-court trap and prevented them from completing a sweep of the eliminations and advancing straight to the finals.

In the Final Four, top seed La Salle defeated Cyrus Baguio and University of Santo Tomas while Ateneo stopped Ronald Tubid and University of the East to set up a dream best-of-three duel that would definitely fill the Big Dome up to the rafters.

At that point, intensity was high as La Salle was shooting for its fifth straight title while Ateneo was itching to end its long championship drought. The stage of the 2002 University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) Finals was set and whoever would emerge as the last team standing would definitely earn a spot in the record books of the most prestigious collegiate league in the country.

The Blue Eagles escaped by the skin of their teeth with a 72-70 win in Game 1 before Cortez restored order, leading the Green Arches to an 85-77 victory in Game 2 to level the series.

Cortez, the savvy playmaker who can do almost everything on the court, sputtered as he missed 11 of his 13 field goal attempts, prompting Ateneo to dictate the tempo right from the start.

Although Adonis Sta. Maria tried to keep the Archers afloat, Fonacier delivered from the charity stripe to seal the victory and tow the Eagles to their first crown since 1988.

Since then, tempers flare every time Ateneo and La Salle share the court.

Although the scrappy core of Arwind Santos, Dennis Miranda, Cesar Catli and Mark Isip emerged for Far Eastern University the following year, the fireworks that Ateneo and La Salle bring to the UAAP were still explosive. At one point, LA Tenorio and Araña were even suspended for sparking a brawl in the Final Four.

In 2005, the bitterness and bad blood got even more personal.

The PBA organized a “friendly” match between the Blue Eagles and Green Archers in bid to raise fund for the sports programs of both schools. The event was dubbed as a “Dream Match,” but it turned into a nightmare when Yeo attacked Villanueva with a dangerous clothesline in the third quarter that left him with swollen lips and bloody nose.

Yeo was thrown out of the game and Ateneo athletic director Ricky Palou threatened to walk out of the match as he couldn’t guarantee the safety of his players. In the end, cooler heads prevailed and it was Villanueva — of all people — who delivered the winning basket for the Blue Eagles.

A year later, Villanueva and Yeo met again, this time at the PBA.

Yeo was already a rookie for Coca-Cola while Villanueva was playing for Red Bull. Sideliners claimed that Yeo told Villanueva that it was about time for them to settle their differences, but the burly forward took it negatively, sparking another brawl between the two noted alumni of the fiercest rivals in college basketball.

Again, Noli Eala stepped in and the issue was settled inside the boardroom with Yeo and Villanueva shaking hands.

Nearly two decades later, the landscape of Ateneo-La Salle rivalry had completely changed.

Bad blood between these two schools is no longer boiling and players are now treating each other like boyhood pals instead of fierce competitors.

Interest on the rivalry had also waned as attendance in their first-round encounter dipped significantly compared before and was even surpassed by the crowd that showed up for the Ateneo-UP game, the match where Bo Perasol was thrown out of the game after figuring in a shouting match with a referee.

Well, I’m not saying that the Ateneo-La Salle rivalry is completely dead.

All I’m saying is that it’s no longer as intense as before as a lot of factors have to be considered like the changes in the coaching staff of both teams, mentality of the players, explosion of social media, Ateneo’s emergence as a powerhouse team and La Salle entering into rebuilding mode.

For now, let us enjoy the second-round battle between these two sides and pray for a new rivalry to rise and rock the UAAP once more.