Crowd Sourcing your team's Rivals

[pianoknight]

KnowRivalry is a pretty cool site I've stumbled onto recently that seeks to essentially crowd-source which teams that fans of YOUR team consider a rival.  I found this while having a discussion with other Husker fans about Nebraska's rivalries since moving to the Big Ten.  Yes, Oklahoma and Colorado are still considered rivals, but as the years go by, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota are heating up as teams that we love to hate.

 

The cool thing is that they calculate how both teams rank one another, as well as some additional criteria.  The Schadenfreude column kills me, as it basically measures the joy you take in the misfortunes of others.  In other words, Packer fans enjoy a good Viking loss as much as anything, and measurably enjoy a Viking loss more than a Bears or Lions loss.  With most of the pro teams, you typically see a lot of in-division rivals, but college is pretty interesting as you have things like USC-Notre Dame that span geography and conference alignment.

 

It covers NCAA, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and MLS.  It doesn't (appear) to break out NCAA by sport though, so I expect some anomalies there.  You can also take the survey yourself to continue to add to the data pool.

 

https://knowrivalry.com/

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Cool find! Lots of teams don't like the Pats; post-Peyton, do they really have any rivals?

[Walk-Off]

Know Rivalry does not seem to have been updated since the first half of 2013 at the latest.  Not only are the NFL's Rams and Chargers still listed as playing in St. Louis and San Diego, respectively, but multiple college sports programs are still assumed to be in conferences to which they no longer belong (Maryland in the ACC, Tulane in Conference USA, UMass as a football-only member of the MAC, etc.).

[Red Comet]

Yeah, I don't think I can get excited for Arkansas like I did for Kansas. I know Mizzou had to leave or become Texas's er female dog, but still.

[BBTV]

That's pretty cool.  For the Eagles, I put 60-40 Cowboys-Giants.  Turns out on the Cowboys end, their top rival is also the Eagles - I was expecting that one to be a little more one-sided.

 

a couple of things I noticed:

1) are rivalries really as strong now in the NBA as they used to be?  Seems to me like outside the playoffs, teams don't really play each other enough to maintain the strong rivalries of the past.  To that end, nobody considers the Sixers a rival, whereas Sixers fans seem to have listed Boston and LAL as rivals, which probably hasn't been valid since the '80s.

 

2) growing up, the Flyers rivals were the Rangers and Devils (in that order) - unquestioned.  Now it's clearly the Penguins.  That's one that I'm fairly certain is born out of 'relative dominance of one side', meaning if/when the Penguins ever go back to being irrelevant, I'd expect that one to change.

 

Also... nobody really cares about Washington.

[pianoknight]

On 11/26/2019 at 9:17 AM, Red Comet said:

Yeah, I don't think I can get excited for Arkansas like I did for Kansas. I know Mizzou had to leave or become Texas's er female dog, but still.

 

It's unfortunate. I used to look forward to Oklahoma, Colorado and Mizzou, which is somewhat hilarious since all four teams are now in different conferences. I'm hoping one day there will be an all-Big 8 playoff.