Work Day: Rivalry Week

This is Rivalry Week in college football and the stakes have never been higher. With BCS and Conference title implications in many of the games, it will be an exciting weekend.

As a player, rivalry week is an exciting thing. The history and often, the bad blood, associated with these rivalry weeks is enough to stir the sore muscles and tired bones of a long season for another game. Alumni from previous years show up and recount old stories of the glory days, victories over the hated foes and how important a victory would mean to them as an alumni. Newspaper clippings of one team bashing or challenging the other in the press are posted in locker rooms to motivate teams during practice. Rivalry weeks are also important for recruiting, as many of the rivalries are in-state rivalries, programs are competing not only for a win, but for recruiting leverage with the incoming class. They want to be able to show their superiority as a program of choice for the graduating seniors making decisions on where to play college football.

Wikipedia has a great and comprehensive list of many of the rivalry games, their names, the trophy involved and how long the game has been played. In Oregon this week, the Beavers and the Ducks, two teams in the AP top twenty-five, compete in the Civil War, a hated rivalry going back to 1894. With a win, the Beavers would earn a spot in the Rose Bowl and the Ducks would love to be the spoiler. It is a heated rivalry that will be sure to be an explosive game.

Rivalries and heated competition can be enough to motivate players and teams to work just a little harder, spend a little more energy, find a little more focus, because of the stakes of bragging rights for a whole year. No matter what the records of the teams involved, every rivalry game can be anybody’s game.