A few weeks ago I wrote an article that I had hoped would give me some insight on what the biggest college football rivalry is. This idea had originally come to me because I am currently deployed to Iraq and am surrounded by thousands of people from all over the US. Some of the biggest conversations here as of late have been about football.
Now of course I too am a football fan, but overall I am a sports fan and I have always admired the big games. The Yankees-Redsox games are huge, but college football rivalries are only played once a year.
One of the lessons I learned from creating such an article is to have more choices. For instance, when I first created this article I only had 14 rivalries on the list and a 15th selection for other. I had a feeling that the last choice, other, would be a popular one but I had no idea.
Cal-Stanford seemed to draw the most attention of the others. Fans of that game were down right nasty about this game not being on the list. The other game that drew a lot of attention was Texas-Texas A&M. Texas A&M fans seemed way more upset about this than Texas fans, since Oklahoma-Texas had made the list.
As I began to count the votes, it occurred to me that I could not in good conscience count all of the votes. This is because some of the comments would say something like this. “No Cal-Stanford? This list sucks.” There are two problems with that comment, one being that the voter never implies that Cal-Stanford is the best game, he just implies that it should have been on the list. The second is that he was crude about it, which of course there is no need. His comment would have been better received if he hadn't of worded it in an attempt to insult the author. Therefore, the vote did not count.
I did this with several of the comments but did grant every single BYU-Utah vote because they were not like the Cal-Stanford voters. The ones that voted for BYU-Utah either just stated that was their game or gave good reason why it should be the top rivalry. Therefore, I counted all of their votes.
As it turned out, Cal-Stanford lost out on at least 8-10 votes. Texas-Texas A&M lost out on about 6-7 votes as well. Oklahoma-Texas, Michigan-Notre Dame and Harvard-Yale are more examples of games that lost out on votes due to derogatory or unclear comments. I will say again, I could not in good conscience post a vote that was not given clearly or was tainted by cruel and ridiculous verbiage.
Another lesson learned is to not only provide more options for a poll that is so big, but also give more information on each choice, that way the voter could base the choice off of facts rather than just being a fan.
Nonetheless, it was a success. So here are the Top Five College Football Rivalries based on the comments I received.
1. Ohio State-Michigan
This Rivalry was a heavy favorite going into this article, but I had no idea it would come out so far ahead. This game received 10 more votes than the second place game did and it also received a second place vote and a third place as well.
2. Texas-Oklahoma
This one barely squeaked in at number seven. I know that these two teams have a very big fan base, which probably helped them out in this one. It is one hell of a rivalry though and proved by the number of votes that it deserved to be on this list.
3. Alabama-Auburn
The Iron Bowl showed how big it is by gaining the third most votes on the poll. I will say this though, not one of the Alabama-Auburn voters complained or dogged on the author, which made them a favorite of mine.
4. Cal-Stanford
This rivalry drew the most controversy of all the rivalries. I quickly learned by the voters comments that I should have put this game on the list. One thing that seemed odd though was most of the voters referred to The Play, which is actually one of the worst officiating mistakes in college football history. In that play, there was a forward lateral pass, which is illegal. Still it is one of the most talked about plays in history.
5. South Carolina-Clemson
I knew this was a fierce rivalry but I had my doubts that it would do any good in this pole. But the SC-Clemson game got plenty and made it to number five. There may not be another rivalry with so much violent history, as there have been many a brawls in the last century.
