Forgotten Rivalries

[Unocal]

We have 2 mentions of Bucs/Packers, but let’s not forget Bucs/Rams from 1999-2002

 

[TrueYankee26]

UConn hoops vs any Big East rival.

UConn women's hoops vs Tennessee.

Miami football vs Florida, and until last year with the 2 facing each other and the Catholics vs Convicts 30 for 30, Notre Dame.

Nebraska football vs Oklahoma, Colorado, and Missouri.

Missouri football vs Kansas.

 

Edit:

Texas A&M vs any in state Big 12 opponent, especially Texas.

Boise State vs Idaho before Boise State became Boise State.

Until the 2018 College World Series: UNC baseball vs Oregon State albeit UNC losing all 3 times to Oregon State en route to the Beavers 3 championships.

[Dilbert]

11 minutes ago, MJWalker45 said:

Do they have one with Red Bulls already?

We had a close match in the Open Cup last year before losing in extra time. We have also played their USL 2 side twice every year and I feel that also helps.

[goalieboy82]

the Caps and Rangers was a rivalry for a time (during playoff time).  

[leopard88]

13 minutes ago, SabresRule7361 said:

 

Shouldn’t the Titans have been able to decline the penalty and thus the winning touchdown count?

 

we see so many times “touchdown, flag, defensive penalty, penalt declined, touchdown stands”

 

No.  The play was considered dead because Peter Boulware touched an offensive lineman before the snap.  The whistle didn't stop the play for taking place, but officially it never happened.

 

The penalty was half the distance to the goal (i.e., about a 1/2 yard, if that).  The Titans then ran the next play from there, with McNair getting stuffed.

[goalieboy82]

in football (aka Soccer)

El Salvador and Honduras (they even had a War in 1970 because a this)

 

[DnBronc]

In the late-60's, the Jets and Raiders did have a little rivalry going. I am not sure when it ended, but my guess is that it was around 1970.

[Cosmic]

Bills-Dolphins was huge in the 90s. Preserving that rivalry is the reason the Bills are in the AFC East instead of swapping places with Baltimore. Really, though, it was mostly just a Kelly v. Marino rivalry. I think the same thing is happening now with Pats-Colts.

[See Red]

2 hours ago, TrueYankee26 said:

UConn hoops vs any Big East rival.

UConn women's hoops vs Tennessee.

Miami football vs Florida, and until last year with the 2 facing each other and the Catholics vs Convicts 30 for 30, Notre Dame.

Nebraska football vs Oklahoma, Colorado, and Missouri.

Missouri football vs Kansas.

 

Edit:

Texas A&M vs any in state Big 12 opponent, especially Texas.

Boise State vs Idaho before Boise State became Boise State.

Until the 2018 College World Series: UNC baseball vs Oregon State albeit UNC losing all 3 times to Oregon State en route to the Beavers 3 championships.

1

 

Miami and Florida do play week one next year in Orlando but it's just a one-game deal.

[RyanMcD29]

Islanders-Capitals would've been on this list, but the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoff series gave a nice jolt to that

Mets-Cardinals was brought up, same goes for Mets-Cubs

 

The more interesting one for my teams, of course, is Syracuse due to the conference realignment of 2013 among other things.

-Syracuse-Penn State football prior to Paterno passing on a Big East football conference/Penn State joining the Big Ten was an annual rivalry. It got sort of renewed earlier this decade but looks like it'll be back to being dormant.

-Syracuse-Colgate and Syracuse-Cornell died in football when those two opponents went FCS, but it's still around in other sports so there's still some regional bad blood

-Football.. well, BC went away when they moved to the ACC in 2004 when Syracuse was in the mix to move before the Virginia legislature helped to get VT in, but the 2013 move helped bring it back. Pitt never went away but Syracuse-Pitt's the odd rivalry where they've played every year for 50 years but it's still actually not heated. Syracuse-West Virginia, though, has not returned aside from the 2012 Pinstripe Bowl so the Battle for the Schwartzwalder Trophy has yet to be renewed since each team left the Big East. You can also argue that Rutgers and UConn were losses here.

-That being said, even though Syracuse is back in the same conference as Miami and VT, those rivalries from the 90s and early 2000s haven't really been renewed due to them being in separate divisions in football

-Basketball was what built the Big East, so of course that's where a lot come in from. Thankfully the Georgetown game's been back on the schedule the past few years, but it isn't the same in non-con. Ditto for the UConn game, which tends to be played every single year in the Thanksgiving tournament slate because every organizer wants to try to make 6OT happen again or something. But at least the two big Big East rivalries have found their way back even if it's not as high stakes at it once was. Villanova initially was still being played once Cuse moved to the ACC, but sadly that went dormant right when the Wildcats found a way to not choke in March and rack up two titles. Also feels like a bit of a void without Providence or Seton Hall on the schedule each winter. The Cuse women's biggest rival's arguably Notre Dame, so realignment didn't have any effect, and oddly enough the rivalry with UConn was bigger post-Big East when they met in the 2016 NCAA title game.

-Lacrosse more or less stayed the same, just that they haven't scheduled Princeton in non-con since the ACC move. I'd still much rather have the Princeton rivalry game on the schedule than some of the other non-con games that have been scheduled, but so it goes.

[The_Admiral]

Penguins-Islanders seems to flare up sporadically.

 

Gone but hopefully not forgotten is Canadiens-Nordiques, which seems to be another case where there was the "prestige" rivalry and then beneath it the one that was just pure unfettered hatred. That was also remarkable for its bloodshed in an Adams Division that was, if not as finesse-based as the Smythe, certainly not as troglodytic as the Norris.

[Wings]

Giants-Cardinals NLCS mini rivalry:

1987, 2002, 2012, 2014

 

Dodgers-Phillies and Reds-Pirates as well. 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

The Orlando Predators and the Tampa Bay Storm had the defining rivalry in the Arena Football League. The next best one was between the Arizona Rattlers and the San Jose SaberCats.

[Unocal]

36 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Penguins-Islanders seems to flare up sporadically.

 

Gone but hopefully not forgotten is Canadiens-Nordiques, which seems to be another case where there was the "prestige" rivalry and then beneath it the one that was just pure unfettered hatred. That was also remarkable for its bloodshed in an Adams Division that was, if not as finesse-based as the Smythe, certainly not as troglodytic as the Norris.

 

The Patrick Division was also rough and tumble

[The_Admiral]

Blackhawks-Canucks was so intense that merely watching Vancouver light itself on fire after losing the Final to Boston was in many ways the Blackhawks' fourth championship. 

[Unocal]

Phillies-Pirates late 70s

[verno]

As a Mizzou fan, l get the feeling our rivalry with Kansas is dying. I still dislike the decision to go to the SEC (money, money) but I will forever hate the Jayhawks

[CrimsonBull9584]

On 10/10/2018 at 12:47 AM, See Red said:

It basically started because Colorado didn't have a rival so Bill McCartney started calling Nebraska their rival since their fans used to flood Boulder when they played every year.  Nobody from Nebraska cared until Colorado got good and McCartney won a national title before Osborne. 

 

Sounds exactly like how the Civil Conflict began. 

[B-Rich]

I'll give you one:

 

Tulane-LSU in Football

 

 

The teams had a rivalry going back to 1893.  Up until the 1990s, they played each other EVERY year, almost always on the LAST game of the season.  

 

But they haven't played each other since 2009.

 

Historically, there was an almost classic juxtaposition of factors in that rivalry-- the private, "high-class" urban school (Tulane) vs. the big, public "working class" state school (LSU).  New Orleans vs. the rest of the state. Uptown snobs and Yats vs. Cajuns and rednecks.

 

Sort of like Tennessee/Vandy, it was always a kind of one-sided rivalry --  LSU dominates the series record 69-22-7, and Tulane won only four times in the teams' last 52 contests.  But it was in all respects, still a VERY BIG in-state rivalry game. 

 

In many locales, there was a tradition of the "wheelbarrow parade"-- fans of the losing team getting the dubious honor of pushing the winning team's fans in a wheelbarrow:

 

 

 Like many rivalries, there was also an interesting game "trophy" -- in this case "The Rag", a banner originally made back in 1940 to be given to the winning school each year:

 

It wasn't always a friendly rivalry, either.  In the early days, brawls which carried into the stands were common.  I remember reading about such a brawl in the early days, which carried on between fans for more than an hour after the game was over.  Many combatants left Tiger Stadium (which was an open bowl at the time), went across the street to the LSU Ag Center's sugarcane fields, and took cane stalks as clubs to beat their counterparts....  But one I thing I do remember and was present for was the bench-clearing game-ending brawl in the 1984 game when I was a junior.  Apparently things had been chippy all night long, and as soon as LSU kicked an extra point to make it 33-15 with less than minute to go, it was ON.  I had never seen anything like it before, and haven't since.  This wasn't a 'tussle', this was a street fight, pure and simple. Kicking players on the ground, taking off helmets and swinging them as weapons, guys jumping up onto crowd fights, players holding other players and viciously punching them in the face.  Both benches cleared; there were individual pockets of fighting all over the field for several minutes.  At LSU Coach Bill Arnsparger's suggestion, the referees simply gave up and called the game with about 27 seconds left, and the refs went inside, leaving the teams to finish their business...  See below video, which only gives you a taste of what went on (the extra point is kicked and the brawl starts at about 1:49):

 

So what happened to the rivalry?

 

It actually started going downhill in the mid-1960s, when Tulane University made a decision to "de-emphasize" athletics and correspondingly left the SEC (a REALLY stupid decision in hindsight; if they stayed in they would be the Vandy of the SEC West-- and probably Vandy's permanent cross-division opponent).  This made the game a non-conference game for LSU, which was not a big deal at the time, but became a big deal much later.   Tulane moving to the Superdome in 1975 also didn't help; it was not the same "rah-rah" college atmosphere for such a storied rivalry.  The one-sidedness of the rivalry didn't help; although Tulane won a few times in the 1970s and early 1980s,  the game was seen as kind of an additional task by LSU, who had always just run their whole SEC schedule gamut by the end of November, then had to play a team who saw this last game often as their "bowl game".

 

But the primary killer came with the big growth in Power 5 college football in the 90s and 2000s.  Arkansas joined the SEC and was added to LSU's schedule as a permanent opponent in the early 90s, and wound up taking the place of Tulane at the end of the season (they tried to make the Arkansas game a new rivalry game, with "The Boot" trophy and a day after Thanksgiving matchup for a while, but it really didn't catch).  Later, with the addition of Texas A&M, that game became LSU's final, Thanksgiving weekend game.  The Tulane games got moved to other, earlier dates in the season, and it just wasn't the same as Thanksgiving weekend. 

 

It also didn't make financial sense for LSU to split a home-and-home series with Tulane-- LSU would regularly fill 95,000 seats at LSU, and then the following year would fill the majority of seats in the Superdome for the Tulane home game, but not make even half of the money.  The powers that be at LSU eventually decided to treat Tulane the way they treated the other college teams in the state  (ULL, UL-Monroe, Louisiana Tech, McNeese State, SLU, Northwestern-- essentially the level that Tulane has fallen to)-- "yeah, we'll play you, but only in Tiger Stadium. Come play for a payout; we'll give you some money."  Tulane won't go for it, and offered things like a 2 for 1 deal home-home series, but just like Alabama won't play Citadel at their house, or Georgia won't play Middle Tennessee in Murfreesboro,  LSU  will NOT agree to play Tulane in New Orleans.

[MilSox]

On 10/10/2018 at 10:52 AM, dfwabel said:

In the 80's, Sixers/Bucks played in the playoffs six times in a seven year span.

 

I remember them also playing the Celtics a lot in that span.

 

All of their playoff runs in the 80s ended at the hands of the Sixers or Celtics.