Michigan and Ohio State
Again, it’s usually worth watching because of its significance as well(this year excluded).
UCLA grad, not an SC grad, but my guess is that the UCLA/USC thing is more important if only because it extends to more than sports. It’s closer to the Harvard/Yale rivalry in that it is a competition between the schools on all levels, academic as well as athletic.
One thing to keep in mind is that rivalries are often seen differently from the outside.
Auburn - Alabama is HUGE … in Alabama. Nationally, not so much.
USC-UCLA might be bigger for them, but USC-Notre Dame is bigger nationally.
Army-Navy is intense for their fans, but neither is nationally prominent in football anymore; ditto with Harvard-Yale and Lehigh-Lafayette.
Some rivalries are kind of onesided – Marshall people will say that Marshall - West Virginia is a big deal … WV people will laugh at that and say their rival is Pittsburgh … and Pitt people say theirs is Penn State … and Penn State says Pitt is not worth scheduling.
Most of these are not that big a deal to people outside their schools, but it’s worth looking at if you’re interested:
Penn State’s rivalries died when they joined the Big Ten. When I was growing up PSU’s rival schools were Pitt, Temple, West Virginia, Notre Dame, Maryland, Syracuse, and maybe a few others (Alabama and Miami (FL) were popular opponents for a while). Now, which conference are those teams NOT a part of?
I was a student at Penn State when the announcement came down that the school was joining the Big Ten. It was a total shock to everyone. There had been rumors that Penn State was planning to join a conference but everyone was assuming it was going to be the Big East. There was real anger at joining the Big Ten because everybody immediately realized that several of their traditional rivalries were going to be over. Imagine being, say, an Alabama fan and being told your school was now going to be part of the ACC and you were going to have to only play Auburn or Florida or Tennessee every three or four years, if at all. (Plus there was the added knowledge that Penn State’s men’s basketball team was nowhere near Big Ten caliber, and indeed it’s never really competed in the Big Ten. In the early 1990’s the team was just starting to get some traction and moving to the Big Ten and absorbing an extra 10 or so losses a year killed the momentum.)
Penn State alumni of my generation are still fairly bitter about the team joining the Big Ten. Even the administration realized it was going to be bad news for the student body: they waited until the students had left for Christmas break to make the announcement. Otherwise, there honestly might have been riots on campus.
Hey, I feel ya. Two of my favorite teams, Temple and UCF, have “rivals” that can’t/won’t even schedule them (PSU and USF). 
In retrospect it was the right decision for Penn State, being independent, out of a conference is not the way college football is or was going.
To hijack the hijack, if Penn State was going to join a conference it should’ve joined the Big East. If that had happened then BC, VaTech and Miami wouldn’t have jumped ship to the ACC and the Big East would be one hellacious football conference. IMMO. YMMV.
Speaking of rivalries that are no more, I miss the annual Oklahoma / Nebraska game.
As for the OP, don’t forget the classic MAC rivals Toledo vs. Bowling Green. The schools are only 15 or so miles apart, and Toledo even has a missile launcher outside its stadium with the missile supposedly aimed at BG. (It’s disarmed now, of course.) 
More importantly for college football purposes, there’s the Missouri/Kansas border war game, which is said to have started with Quantrill’s Raiders
UT v. TAMU is normally a good one, but it won’t be this year.
The Bedlam game is College Gameday and the ABC Saturday night game this week. I think OSU v. OU will be the best game out there this week.
From where I sit at this moment I can hear two different work room trash talking conversations about the Big Game this weekend.
Maybe other people don’t really care much, but if you live in South Carolina then USC vs. Clemson will devour your life, like it or not.
I recently read something about your bumper stickers–they’re priceless! If you don’t mind, I’d like to share some of them:
USC:
U$C/U(cent sign)LA–You get what you pay for!
My Maid Went to UCLA
I Used To Go To UCLA Until My Father Got a Job
UCLA:
University of Social Climbers
University of Spoiled Children
And my personal favorite:
Trojans Always Break
HA!
When I was in school the one’s I saw a lot were U$C and University of Spoiled Children. They were common enough that I still use U$C almost without thinking.
My favorite/least favorite personal story about the rivalry. I have several friends who were going to USC while I was at UCLA and we had gotten into the habbit of giving each other a hard time. When I would be introduced to one of their school friends the common (and expected) response from me was “Oh, you couldn’t get into UCLA either?” They gave me a hard time too. Usually just friendly dicking around, no one actually took any of this stuff seriously.
Until I met a guy who was going to SC’s business school. We were talking, I was impressed that he had gone to Harvard as an undergrad and then he told me he was going to business school at SC where he met my buddy. Me, “Ah, you couldn’t get into UCLA?” A sort of sad/horrified look comes on his face. “No, actually, I couldn’t. It was my first choice, but they didn’t take me.” And then he walks off. :smack:
I have learned to be a bit more careful since then.
The big joke everyone learns at orientation is “What does a Trojan and a Bruin both have in common? They both got into USC.”
The thread is about football, and their rivalry in football isn’t much, but in college b-ball, it doesn’t get any bigger than North Carolina-Duke.
Army-Navy should be at the top of everyone’s list as far as college rivalries go. Two of most important schools in US.
What happened to University of Second Choice for USC?
We call it that and worse in my house all the time.
When Michigan and MSU play it often is a mismatch, But an upset will make the lower seeds whole season more palatable. If Uof M won this year they could always say they weren’t the loser in the state. But this year there was no salvation.
Huh? Army and Navy haven’t mattered in college football in decades. Frankly, I don’t think they belong in Division I. The game is a rivalry…but nobody cares other than folks that went there or those who are related to someone who did.
Pitt vs. WVU! The Backyard Brawl, baby! Last year’s BYB was epic. In a year of upsets and the curse of #2, Pitt (4-7) goes to Morgantown and beats down heavily favored #2 ranked WVU in the last game of the season to knock them out of BCS title game contention! Yes!
Damn right! Someday, the idiot alumni at FSU will realize that Bobby has been a walking corpse of pudding and BBQ sauce for more than a decade now, and they’ll get him to see “reason” and resign. Then we can get back to real Seminole football!
F-L-O-R-I-D-A S-T-A-T-E!
Florida State! Florida State! Florida State! WOOOO!
Florida / Florida State is a biggy down here in Florida.
Boston College / Notre Dame is a big rivalry to us at Boston College, but I sometimes wonder if ND doesn’t feel the same way. We’ve wiped their asses the last few times we’ve played though, so all is well.