In sports, as in “Thelma and Louise” or “Fried Green Tomatoes,” two people who are nothing alike empower one another and find ways to win together.

A battle has raged since the time when Earth was a furious landscape of molten lava — the battle between men’s need to watch sports and women’s unparalleled hatred for them.

Say what you will about this merely being a stereotype, but it is a real conflict most couples are either buried by, or build strength from. The hordes of shows that are renowned for attracting females are bound by a thread of certain characteristics.

Shows like “Desperate Housewives” contain complex characters thrown into equally difficult situations. Soap operas are the same way, only more tragic. Chick flicks are notorious for being intensely melodramatic. Either that, or chick flicks are cute comedies that make not-so-witty jabs at common differences in male and female dating lives.

The stereotype, and half truth, for a straight male’s idea of entertainment leaves one thinking when a man has a chunk of free time he is either fighting or blowing something up. Masculine entertainment requirements are little plot, outlandish action and so much eye candy one’s stomach develops an ulcer.

Are men and women doomed to be found in different rooms of the house when seeking entertainment? One unlikely hero will save couples from unnecessary quarrels: sports.

Aside from the violent hits of football, the dazzling dunks of basketball, the unbelievably long home runs in baseball, sports are just like soap operas — the characters make watching them more rewarding than the actual winning and losing does.

In every sport there is a cast of characters. Brett Favre, once the head of an illustrious football franchise and considered a reckless youth of unmatched talent, now is considered a last relic from a golden era an entire state clings to in a dark time.

Unfazed, he straps on his chin strap over his grey five-o-clock shadow and lets his heart make more plays than his arm will allow. Even though the team is facing the cruel reality that an era is done, people tune in to see the legend do more than attempt to win a game — they want to see elderly Favre withstand time.

Terrell Owens defines the idea of sports as theater. With his sideline tantrums, controversial end-zone dances, and off-field ego, watching him catch a ball from a humble Donavan McNabb makes it more than a simple completed pass. Games become thick plots of odd couples forced to work together.

In sports, as in “Thelma and Louise” or “Fried Green Tomatoes,” two people who are nothing alike empower one another and find ways to win together. The Chicago Bulls’ Michael Jordan-era was witness to the pairing of the god of all sports, “MJ” and baddest of bad boys, Dennis Rodman. Jordan — all business, image-oriented and consumed with a burning passion for successes — won two championships with Rodman and his multi-colored hair, multitude of piercings that would blow up a metal detector, burning-rubber motorcycle, cross-dressing tendencies and a careless loner attitude that landed him in a myriad of fights.

How could these two personalities even be in the same room, let alone play together or even win together?

Watching MJ and Rodman play live contained more tension than if the women of “Sex and the City” fought over Duke from “The Notebook,” with the women of “Desperate Housewives.”

Each team, or cast, is a web of stories. This web works toward one goal: the glory and immortality of a championship.

One can see a pass completion in football, an assist in basketball or a pitch in baseball superficially if they don’t know the history that has culminated to that moment. When the history is known, sports stop being games and become America’s paramount entertainment.

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