By rivalry (friendly or otherwise), I mean like that between the English and the Scottish, or the English and the Welsh, or the English and the Irish, or the English and the English (north vs south, Londoners vs Home Counties etc). Damn English! They ruined England.
I hear that there’s a rivalry between Texas and Oklahoma because of that futuristic rugby you play. I ask because I want to visit the colonies one day and don’t want to make a tit of myself with a faux-pas.
Here in Ohio, we are always poking fun at people who live in Kentucky and West Virginia. (“Bunch of backward hicks.”) And there is a huge rivalry in college football between The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan.
Minnesota and Wisconsin have a rivalry as well. The rivalry between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers (of NFL football) is huge. There is also a huge rivalry between the University of Minnesota Gophers and the University of Wisconsin Badgers, especially in football.
Everybody who doesn’t live in California hates California.
Everybody who doesn’t live in Texas hates Texas.
Everybody who doesn’t live in New York hates New York.
Most people don’t have strong opinions about any other state they don’t live in.
There’s a bit of a rivalry between Maryland and Virginia, but really it’s more like Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia vs. the rest of Virginia.
In the Maryland-DC-Northern Virginia area most of the bitching tends to center around driving, with each faction blaming their traffic woes on the others.
You’re mostly going to find football and basketball rivalries. I will echo ‘Texas v Everyone,’ or at least Texas v Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Regionally there are North vs. South (well, really, Everybody vs. South) and East Coast vs. West Coast. Both coasts vs. flyover country (that empty land that you fly over when you go from LA to NYC).
Finally you’ll find stereotypes for most states, but they usually only come out as jokes.
It has been ages since I lived in Illinois, but back then, Illinois and Indiana were not exactly good buddies.
While I would agree that California is not generally beloved by most other states, Californians don’t really care. And speaking solely for residents of NYC, they don’t particularly care what people think of them either. Hard to have a rivalry when you don’t give a damn what others think.
That said, New Yorkers do have a particular disdain for California - perhaps a tad bit of jealousy for the film/music industry in California? Most ex-New Yorkers I met in California admitted their family and friends back in NYC considered them traitors for moving “there”. New Yorkers had no problems once they arrived in California - but Californians are generally not greeted with open arms if they move to NYC.
It may bear noting that state-to-state rivalries are not the same as those between European countries in the past. The state rivalries are comparatively good natured, and there isn’t the slightest possibility that they would ever erupt in war. We’re Americans first and New Yorkers or Californians second.
Wisconsinites aren’t terribly fond of folks from Illinois, because so many Illinois people appear only in the summer for vacations in their summer cottages or at the gazillion water parks around the Wisconsin Dells. There are names for these people: Fibs (Fucking Illinois bastards); even Fishtabs (Fucking Illinois shitheads towing a boat)!
However, the Ohio-Michigan rivalry does go back to the Ohio Michiigan War, where the Ohio and Michigan militias were raised over a disputed strip of land (which includes Toledo).
(It’s said that, in the long term, Ohio lost the war, because Ohio got Toledo and Michigan got the Upper Peninsula. This is possibly unfair to Toledo.)
The Wisconsin-Illinois rivalry is much bigger. Packers-Bears games are much more significant than Packers-Vikings, given that the former is the oldest rivalry in the NFL. Granted, Badgers versus Illini doesn’t generate as much heat as Badgers-Gophers, but the WI-IL rivalry transcends college sports greatly.
There are also the states that you tell jokes about. I’ve lived in Montana, where they tell North Dakota jokes (most of which I found later in an old paperback book of Polack jokes), and in Minnesota, they tell Iowa jokes. No idea if those rivalries go the other way.
True. I didn’t even know people in Norcal had a problem until I went to school up there. Then I was like, “Wait, what?” We don’t even notice or care down in LA.
Re: Minn/Wisc, they’re the same thing to me. I lived in Minn for a while and referred to the whole area as Minnesconsin. This did not go over well.
