There are some fine rivalries down south. I'm living the Springboks and All Blacks here...that is intense. I've lived in Texas and they are convinced that their rivalry with Oklahoma is bitter but it seemed pretty tame (that word may be sane) to me.
Living around the world and conducting cross-cultural research, I have come to understand that it is incredibly difficult to understand another culture unless you have lived within it for several years. Heck, Nick Saban doesn't understand it and he experienced the rivalry between Ohio State and TCUN as an Ohio State assistant coach. In an interview on ESPiN or Fox last week, he said he was stunned about how people in Columbus reacted to losing The Game and that Columbus people needed to do something about that. I'm sure that people in Columbus looked at him on TV and laughed in response.
The first ten years of our marriage, my South African wife--who understood the intense rugby rivalry between the Springboks and All Blacks--said that she could not understand how a normally rational professor could put so much emphasis on a game. Now, more than 30 years later, she understands that Ohio State - TCUN is simply a cultural thing that has an intensity few understand outside of the two states.
People talk about UNC-Duke in basketball. I was a visiting professor at UNC and I can tell you, on a scale of 0 to 100, where The Game is 100, what I saw was below a 50. I have extended family in Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana for generations. I don't see an intensity of rivalry among them. RugbyBuck lives in the South, ask him. It is qualitatively different for outsiders, but among us, it is what it is.
I suspect that the intensity of the rivalry arises from the border disputes in the early years of the American republic, when Ohio and Michigan went to war. Any of you SEC buggers live in a state that went to war with the rival state next door? Someone once joked that Ohio State grad General Curtis LeMay should not have stopped with two in Japan and dropped a third nuclear bomb on Ann Arbor. My wife was horrified that it was said in front of kids and that they could hate TCUN to that extent. I must admit, so was I.
To some extent, I agree with Saban's assessment that it's over the top. A part of me bristles when I hear Buckeye fans disparaging TCUN academics. I have professor friends at TCUN and I know them to be among the top 1% of scholars in our field worldwide (as measured in the benchmark Stanford University study). I can't imagine why a sports rivalry has to produce such negativity about a world-class academic institution. I don't understand why some Buckeye fans say the things they say.
But then, every year it's football season. The Game starts and I see the TCUN lowlife on-field behavior. The pushing, the shoving, the mouthing off after plays...and I want to see the Buckeyes plant those cheating, mouthy, classless bastards in the turf.
I don't see why there is any reason to compare rivalries. Forty years removed from the US, I'm watching that game with the same intensity sitting on the tip of Africa. I have Ohio friends and family watching in the UK, Australia, Colombia with the same intensity. My kids, born here and now here and scattered around the world, dress in Buckeye gear on the day. I can't count the times that someone has mentioned The Game, when they ask where I am from and I say Ohio.
So, I guess that I don't see why this North/South dynamic is emerging in this thread. We all love football. You think your rivalry is intense, well you have every right to think that. No one has the right to tell anyone what they should be feeling from their own experiences. But, I think ESPiN's poll of worldwide rivalries and my own experiences suggest that, when asked to name the most intense rivalry in college football, The Game will emerge front and center.
