I’m attempting to become better educated about sports so that I’m not completely lost in those kinds of conversations. Having learned most of the rules of American football so far, I’d now like to get into something a bit more nuanced. Hence the question in the title!
What are the best known college football rivalries? Wikipedia doesn’t seem to mention it (ex. University of Michigan’s website doesn’t say who they’re rivals are), so I figured this would be a good place to ask.
Michigan’s rival is Ohio State.
Texas has Texas A&M and Oklahoma.
Auburn-Alabama
Notre Dame-USC
Army-Navy
Ohio State - Michigan
Texas-Oklahoma
These are probably,IMO, the biggest rivalries (in no particular order) that doesn’t mean there aren’t any others,but those are the ones that stuck out instantly in my mind. Usually in a state with two big programs you will have a rivalry: BYU-Utah; Oregon-Oregon State (known as the civil war); Clemson-South Carolina…etc
I think a lot of it depends on region. In my neck of the woods, there seems to be a ton of SEC and ACC rivalries. I’m aware of some of the bigger Big(11)Ten and Big 12 rivalries, but not the less famous ones (Iowa/Iowa State; Purdue/Indiana, etc).
Hell it seems like UGA has a ‘rivalry’ every week: UT, UF, Bama, Auburn, GaTech, etc.
Michigan-Ohio State
Army-Navy
These two are the most well known
To hijack things a bit, it seems that this year’s “Rivalry Week” has been uncommonly mundane. Most of the big rivalries feature teams with a somewhat large disparity in talent levels and success.
OSU-Michigan has almost always featured the two best teams in the Big Ten and usually decides who represents the Big Ten in the Title Game/Rose Bowl. This year Michigan’s infamous demise has rendered the game mostly inconsequential.
The USC-Notre Dame game has always had huge implications, but it hasn’t meant anything since that famous Brady Quinn - Matt Leinart matchup a few years back.
I can’t remember the last time that Alabama-Auburn were both relevant at the same time.
Miami-FSU used to be the biggest non-Bowl Game of the year and hasn’t meant anything for close to a decade.
USC-UCLA, Stanford-Cal, Oregon-OSU, Washington-Wazzu…all either lopsided or terrible games.
Michigan-MSU hasn’t been competitive is years, nor has Iowa-Minnesota, Illinois-Northwestern or IU-Purdue.
Army-Navy hasn’t been remarkable for anything other than historic and jingoistic reasons for a while. And surprisingly enough Navy has been much better than Army for a long time.
This year the Big 12’s Texas-Oklahoma has been the only traditional rivalry of merit.
All in all, the “Rivalry” seems to have hit an all-time low this season.
USC-UCLA is a big one, especially since the campuses are close to one another and both influence a large region. A lot of the time we all end up at the same grad/professional schools, and while most of the year everyone is cordial or even friendly with one another, things get real ugly around Beat SC week (sorry, “Blue and Gold Week” :rolleyes: ).
Sorry to double-post right after an edit even, but our rivalry is not just football. We’re rivals in everything. Especially on the freeway. :p:D
Harvard-Yale
Alabama-Auburn
Florida State/Florida and Florida State/Miami. These games had a huge influence on college football from around 1987-2000. FSU and Miami aren’t going to be down forever.
The biggest 3 I can think of:
Michigan-Ohio State: often recognized as one of the best rivalries in all of sports, not just college football due to the consistent quality of the teams (except for this year)
Auburn-Alabama: perhaps the nastiest of the rivalries
Army-Navy: because it is pure Americana, not because of the quality of the current teams (of course 50 years ago, both teams were amongst the best in the nations)
There are several other significant ones that have already been mentioned. I’ll also add Notre Dame-Michigan as maybe being in the top 10-15.
As an ND grad, I’d like to know what the Southern Cal folks think about our rivalry, especially in regard to your rivalry with UCLA. How would you rank the two?
The Important Ones:
Mississippi State v. Ole Miss
Alabama v. Auburn
Florida v. Georgia
LSU v. Ole Miss
Alabama v. Tennessee
Georgia v. Tennessee
Any SEC team v. Any Other SEC team
The rest involve non-SEC teams, so they aren’t very important.
Put “The Game” (in quotes) into Wiki and see what comes at the top of the list.
Is there another one outside of Michigan v. Ohio State?
WTF are you TALKING about?!?!?
Sure the Apple Cup was a 1-9 vs. 0-10 matchup 
but the game ended 16-13 in 2OT. Neither lopsided nor terrible. In fact, both teams sucked so equally, it was probably one of the best games in the PAC-10 all season season.
And the Civil War (Oregon/Oregon State) hasn’t even happened yet.
As per the OP: Michigan/Ohio State, Army/Navy, Texas/Oklahoma, and Florida/Georgia.
Something that’s amazed me, as far as In-State rivalries, especially with Division I-A schools:
Mississippi State has not played Southern Mississippi since 1990. Worse yet, Ole Miss has not played Southern Miss since 1984!
Wisconsin / Minnesota is the oldest and most played rivalries in Division 1-A
(118 games since 1890)
Brian
The Battle of the Palouse used to be a cool rivalry, although it’s not among the best known. This was the game between the Idaho Vandals and Washington State Cougars.
The Moscow, Idaho and Pullman, Washington campuses are about 7-8 miles apart, and it was tradition that the losing team would walk from the other school back to their own. Between 1969 - 1970 both schools’ stadiums burned down from suspected arson.
The two teams stopped playing each other for a time, then the games resumed, but now they look to go to a less frequent basis again.
Oh dang, there’s quite a few more than I’d expected. Looks like I’ve got some research ahead of me. This’ll make watching ESPN easier to understand, at least! Thanks guys.