College Football Rivalries

[Soonerwake]

With all the talk of the big Michigan vs Notre Dame rivalry this week, I was curious about where it ranks in the landscape of big rivalries. I was shocked to see that they just started playing each other in 1987. Are you kidding me?? 26 years is a BIG rivalry?? Edit- they have played 40 times. Total....

Why does the media come up with this stuff? I counted almost 40 rivalries that have been played for more than 100 years. Now, some of those have been very one-sided, like OU vs OSU and Nebraska vs ISU, and some aren't played regularly anymore, like Texas vs Texas A&M, and some involve teams that have little to no tradition of winning, like TCU vs Baylor. All of those issues take away from the importance of the rivalry, but the length of time the teams have played has to have some bearing on a match-up being called a "historic traditional rivalry" like I've heard this UM ND game benign called repeatedly all week.

Any thoughts??

[Sabanball]

I hate to see so many of the long-standing rivalries go away. To me that's one of the things that makes college football special. But with the evolution to super conferences I don't see how many of them can be preserved. One casualty is the Mizzou/Kansas game--neither are great football programs, but I hate to see a rivalry that has gone on as long as that one has come to an end.

[stoopified]

Takes more than longevity to create a rivalry.It also takes if not somewhat evenly matched programs who each in turn have the upper hand.Perfect example of rivalries OU-Nebraska ( now defunct,sadly).OU-Texas is another.The Longhorns like to tout their overall lead in the series but forget that that lead was built 60+ years ago while OU has had control in 4 of the last 6 decades(50's,70's,80's,00's, and currently up 3-0 in the 7th decade(10's).Those are rivalries.Then there are long standing series such as OU-KSU,OU-KU,OU-ISU,OU-OSU,which are so laughably one sided that they cannot be considered a rivalry.