It mostly depends on who you’re asking. College football, and the rest of college athletics, firmly sits in either the post or mid-realignment era. While I personally believe the latter to be true, and that more moves are on the horizon, it’s impossible to deny that the current landscape has already been irreparably changed.
In just a few short years, we lost some of our sport’s most historic rivalries. Notre Dame v. Michigan, Missouri v. Kansas, Texas v. Texas A&M. Each of these games dead for the foreseeable future, despite their prolific impact on the sport. We mourn these games because they were still relevant. Although they each had century long pedigrees, there was still a sense that they were all cut down in their prime.
That’s the tragedy of great college football rivalries. They exist only at the mutual whim of the universities and their television partners. With one stroke of the pen, they can be gone forever. (Or at least until they meet in a bowl game.)
Meanwhile, building a rivalry takes time. It requires the perfect set of circumstances, and a willingness from both sides to participate fully. But once cultivated, a strong rivalry game can lead to the kind of national attention, atmosphere, and pageantry that attracts new fans and recruits alike.
With that in mind, here are a few do’s and don’ts to forging new rivalries in the realignment era.
DO: Embrace old foes and dormant rivalries.
Realignment may have torn many rivalries to shreds, but it also united other. Take LSU and Texas A&M for example. Brought together again in when the SEC expanded to 14 teams, the Tigers and Aggies have always had a tepid but streaky relationship. Meeting during spurts during the 40’s, 60’s, and early 90’s, the games were always known to be heated and well played. Since meeting again for the first time in 2011 (prior to A&M actually entering the league), this game has been touted as a suitable replacement for A&M’s traditional Thanksgiving meeting with Texas, even sharing some characteristics of the old rivalry like being mostly one sided.
DON’T: Create a rivalry without the other team being invested.
Did you know UConn and UCF have a rivalry? Neither did UCF. In June, UConn coach Bob Diaco decided that the now annual conference game against the Golden Knights would be called the Civil Conflict, producing a trophy and everything. Amazingly, UCF’s George O’Leary had no idea this was now a thing. “My experience is you’re more likely to have a rivalry against a team closer to where you live. When you go 10 states away, I think it’s hard.”
When challenged by reporters over whether a rivalry can just be created unilaterally, Diaco replied that, “they don’t get to say whether they’re our rival or not.” Except that they do. Creating a trophy and countdown clock for the one FBS opponent your team beat last year reeks of desperation, especially when that trophy conveniently ignores the first meeting between the two teams where UConn lost by 45 points.
DO: Let rivalry trophies come naturally. (Or at least from the internet.)
The trophies can be both the best and worst thing about rivalry games. The best ones are rarely trophies as we imagine them, but actual spoils of victory like the Michigan and Minnesota’s Little Brown Jug, or are derived from prior art like Indiana and Purdue’s Old Oaken Bucket. These trophies are old and innocent and folky in the best sense of the word. The worst trophies tend to be the ones that try to crib that feeling, usually identifying barely relevant commonalities between the two participant schools, usually backed by agriculture lobbyists, and casting them in bronze. Case in point.
But modern day trophies can still be fun, so long as they aren’t taken too seriously. Just look at the newest trophy for the budding Minnesota-Nebraska rivalry. What started as a twitter joke between Minnesota’s mascot, Goldy the Gopher, and the most prominent fake coach in the history of Nebraska football, @FauxPelini, became a reality. And despite it’s, um, rustic appeal, it has become one of the most noticeable and refreshing trophies to come from a new rivalry. Fans and schools alike have accepted it because it’s fun, funny, and different. Sure it isn’t some hundred pound gold monstrosity, but neither was the little brown jug.
DON’T: Create a rivalry or trophy out of thin air.
If there are any lessons I hope people hold onto, it’s this one. Rivalries aren’t just something you can manufacture out of thin air. There has to be some basis. Sure the previously mentioned Minnesota-Nebraska game is based entirely on a twitter joke, but that is at least something. It came about organically, and was backed by fans almost immediately. Rivalries don’t have to, and sometimes shouldn’t be geographically oriented, but they do have to have an origin. A mediocre start leads to a mediocre finish. There have been countless trophies lost to the equipment rooms of history, all because people and players stopped caring enough to carry them off the field.
At the same time, not every rivalry needs a trophy, especially the good ones. Pride. Bragging rights. Those are what is really at stake. It may sound like a great idea to sell a popular game’s naming rights to the local dairy council, but all you’re doing is cheapening a legacy.
The best way to build a rivalry is to not build one at all. So long as the games are interesting, they tend to materialize on their own. People can recognize a fake, because all the participation awards in the world can’t replace genuine pride.
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