Snort. Only people in Lubbock think that A&M or UT has a rivalry with Tech.
As for the OP, sure- I can pull for the other teams in the conference when they’re playing non-conference teams, even if they’re as odious as UT is.
Miami fan here. No, I don’t pull for conference/division rivals. I couldn’t care much less about other teams. I want my team to win, and if they don’t, I don’t get satisfaction from “so-and-so from the ACC did well, that excuses our poor performance.” I may pull for rival by chance due to the match-up (I’ll pull for FSU over Notre Dame, for example), but not on conference principle.
Conference yes, rival no. As a Beaver fan,the thought of the Ducks winning the BCS makes me simultaneously really angry and sick to my stomach. I can’t think of a worse outcome for me in all of sports. Im used to the Lakers and Yankees winning. I’d never hear the end of it from my brother, among others. Any other team in the PAC10, no problem.
And now you all see why.
In college sports, I think you’ll find a lot of people who will support most or all of their conference over non-conference opponents because it does at least indirectly help their team, either by boosting their record and, thus, making their standing better, or just bringing attention to the conference, which also helps the school.
There’s no such distinctions in most professional sports, and since teams compete more directly against their division, it is almost always helpful to see them lose (excepting odd tie-break rules). That said, because my team is the Redskins, I do find I have a slight favor toward the NFC in general over the AFC if I’m otherwise fairly neutral about the game. For instance, in last years Super Bowl, I was pretty much indifferent about the Colts and Saints, so my slight NFC favor had me rooting for the Saints.
I may also potentially favor Eagles or Giants once the playoffs are on and the Skins are out of the picture for “NFC East pride”, but never the Cowboys and never in the regular season. In general, though, I will root against any team from the NFC East unless they’re playing the Patriots, since they are pure evil, and internally, I’ll root against whatever team is playing the Cowboys except perhaps in a situation like now where they have virtually no playoff shot, so they can spoil the Giants and Eagles to help edge the Skins in.
I imagine that sort of favoritism is strongest in MLB because there are actually rule differences and I have met people who consider whichever league they don’t like to not be real baseball because of those rule differences.
NC State fan. I have never, nor will I ever root for Carolina.
Same here. Although I make an exception for Ohio State. I’m not exactly sure why I have an engendered hatred of Ohio State, but, for whatever reason, I cannot bring myself to ever root for them. Although, if Notre Dame ever joins the Big Ten, Ohio State will probably fall off my radar. I only have hate enough for one team at a time, and Notre Dame will displace the OSU if that scenario should ever come to pass. I’m not even quite certain who our rival (Northwestern) is technically supposed to be anyway. Feels like it should be Iowa these days.
Our main rival is Illinois.
As far as football, our two guaranteed opponents are Illinois and Purdue, at least until Nebraska joins next year. We’ll still keep Illinois, but I can’t recall if there are any other guaranteed opponents.
I bleed the Purple and Gold of LSU and will root for other SEC teams in bowl games. Except Florida. I can just barely stomach them now that Spurrier is gone, but actively root for them? Never. If they win a bowl game, the most I can say is “good for the SEC.” The way I look at it, the SEC wins so many bowl games these days, a loss by Florida doesn’t really hurt the conference reputation. 