What is a rivalry?

A rivalry is NOT someone you compete against every season.
It is NOT just proximity.
It is NOT hatred, enmity, or animosity.
It is NOT sharing a conference, a city, or a state.

What a rivalry IS...is a pair of teams who can literally "throw out the records" whenever they play.

Consider the games today: Ohio St v Michigan, which was 17-22 points in the Buckeyes' favored column...way too much for a rivalry game. Currently 28-21 OSU, back and forth all game long....Kentucky v Louisville, in which UL was favored by 9-14, but which was at 28-26 in the fourth last check....Georgia Tech v Georgia, where underdog GT leads 21-17 with under three to go...and apparently the two teams brought into the Pac-12 together, Utah v Colorado, where the Utes should have won rather easily but the Buffaloes lead by two in the third quarter. Watching the Civil War tonight (Oregon v Oregon St) or the most fascinating intersectional rivalry in football, Notre Dame v USC, or either of the SEC  matchups: Mississippi St/Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl (games w names usually are trying to be rivalries!) and the Iron Bowl which cannot top last year's everevereverever, Auburn v Alabama.

There are certainly other examples: Arizona/Arizona St (42-35 yesterday), Stanford/Cal, UCLA/USC, Harvard/Yale, Florida St/Miami-Fl, and you can probably name many of your own. Sometimes they arise from personality meshes: in the NFL, New England v Indianapolis were big rivals because they were both top of the division teams, but more because they had Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, the two great quarterbacks of their generation.

And sometimes, rivalries are manufactured - rarely successfully, but once in a while... For example, Nebraska entering the Big Ten, they're playing new teams up and down their schedule, and so there are several teams who might serve as a rival for them. But, watching the wild game against Iowa yesterday (which went to overtime before UN won 37-34), they may have found a rival after all!

Sometimes, rivalries can die, too: it used to be that Boise St v Idaho was one of the great unsung rivalries in the nation, through there D2 days, then the Big Sky days, then they move up into the Big West together in the FBS, and finally into the WAC....but as the Broncos continued to improve, winning conference championships left and right, the Vandals sputtered to losing seasons, fell out of conferences altogether for a year before scrambling back into the low-level Sun Belt and a 1-10 season again this year. When Boise won its tenth or twelfth straight over U of I, it became clear that the critical element of "any given day" was long gone. And therefore, so was the rivalry. There were still sports where the two teams are rivals, but not in football.