In college football, not all rivalries are created equal

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When you think about the pageantry of college football, the grand history of the sport, the entire concept of rivalries, you probably think of some pretty big ones. There’s Alabama vs. Auburn. Florida vs. Florida State. Ohio State vs. Michigan.

But sometimes, what one fanbase considers their top rivalry happens to not be their actual top rival. Know Rivalry looked at the most unbalanced rivalries in college football. But why are they unbalanced? Let’s take a look.

Vanderbilt vs. Tennessee

Ask a Tennessee fan to name their biggest rival and you’ll likely hear Alabama, Georgia, maybe even Florida before you get to Vanderbilt. For a pair of in-state rivals in the same conference, you’d think this rivalry would go both ways.

But there’s a lot of a big-brother, little-brother thing between the Volunteers and the Commodores. Tennessee leads the all-time series between the two sides 80-29-4, though Vanderbilt did win three in a row between 2016 and 2018, but the biggest run of success for the Commodores came in the early days, as Vanderbilt was 19-2-3 in the rivalry from 1892 to 1927.

What changed? If we’re talking specifics of this rivalry, it was that Tennessee hired Robert Neyland as its head coach, a move specifically made with beating Vanderbilt in mind.

But it’s also illustrative of a major shift in the early days of college football. The sport first took hold at private universities — schools like Harvard and Yale are afterthoughts in college football now, but were major players back in the day. As the goals of college football shifted and the game became more professionalized, private universities like Vanderbilt weren’t able to keep up with schools like Tennessee. The imbalance reached its pinnacle in the late 20th century — after Vanderbilt defeated Tennessee in 1982, the Vols won the next 22 consecutive matchups.

So when that kind of a performance gap appeared, it was natural that Tennessee fans would start to care less about Vanderbilt fans, to the point where it might just be another game for them. On the other side, Vanderbilt feels like it’s been forgotten in this in-state rivalry, so the game still means a ton to the Commodores.

Oklahoma State vs. Oklahoma

Speaking of a big brother and little brother kind of rivalry, we have Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.

Unlike Tennessee-Vanderbilt, OU fans at least consider Oklahoma State to be one of their main rivals, though not the team’s top rival — Know Rivalry’s data on college rivalries shows that Oklahoma fans overwhelmingly consider Texas to be the team’s top rival.

The Bedlam Series has been dominated by the Sooners, who have won 91 of the 118 all-time matchups. Aside from a period in the late 90s and early 2000s when the Cowboys won five times in eight years and a little streak of either ties or Oklahoma A&M wins over six years during the Great Depression, OU has completely controlled the series. 

Why? It’s pretty simple: Oklahoma is one of the great programs in college football history. Sometimes it just comes down to that: Oklahoma found success early under head coach Bennie Owen and used that stability to launch into the upper echelon of college football.

All of this brings up another major point that highlights how rivals are made: when there’s an imbalance in the on-field results between two teams who are in-state rivals, the better of those two teams tends to turn to their closest out-of-state rivalry. For as much fun as Bedlam is, it can’t equal the grandeur of Texas and OU playing at the Texas State Fair every year. That’ll be especially true now that OU and OSU are in separate conferences.

Georgia Tech vs. Georgia

Any time a game is known by a moniker like “Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate” and is between two schools within 70 miles of each other, you know you’re in for a good rivalry, and that’s what we have with Georgia and Georgia Tech. It’s a pretty good rivalry!

And it’s not that lopsided, at least as far as the on-field results go. Georgia has 71 wins in the series, but 41 for Georgia Tech isn’t that far behind. This one really could have developed into something huge.

But this is where conference alignment comes into play. The two haven’t shared a conference since Georgia Tech left the SEC in 1964. While the matchup itself continued after that, Georgia’s matchups against Florida began to grow in importance because there was more at stake.

Oregon State vs. Oregon

I’m not going to say that conference realignment is destroying college football, but it’s clear that it’s leading to the loss of something. 

This rivalry is a great example of the shifting landscape. For the same reasons I’ve written about above, Oregon fans consider Washington to be their top rival and Washington fans consider Oregon their top rival. Two flagship programs in neighboring states — it’s the same story as a Texas-Oklahoma or a Georgia-Florida.

But the gap is only going to grow from here. We’re consolidating into this world where there’s the SEC, the Big Ten and then everyone else. In the old world, Oregon and Oregon State might have had a certain dynamic, but will Oregon fans have any reason to even think about the Beavers now?

Whereas on the other side, will Beavers fans grow to hate Oregon fans even more? By being left out of realignment when the Pac-12 imploded, the Beavers have plenty of reason to feel aggrieved. This is just going to keep becoming more and more of a one-sided hate fest.

Georgia State vs. Georgia Southern

Alright, we can’t just talk about power conference rivalries. There are still plenty of imbalances at the lower levels.

Georgia State fans consider Georgia Southern to be their main rival, but Georgia Southern overwhelmingly considers Appalachian State to be their biggest.

The reason for this? There’s some of that “two rivals from nearby states” thing going on, but it also illustrates how hard it is for new rivalries to form.

Georgia Southern made the move up to FBS in 2014. That same year, App State made the exact same move. The two teams were rivals in the lower division and maintained that with the move up to the higher division.

But Georgia State? It didn’t even have a football program until 2008, and it never faced Georgia Southern until 2014. The sides have a rivalry as far as which deserves the abbreviation GSU and have competed in other sports over the years, but they just don’t have the history. It’s hard to manufacture that. I know from experience — at the NFL level, I’m a Houston Texans fan, and when the team first launched I hated the Cowboys. The Cowboys? I don’t think they cared about us at all. Over time, I grew to view other teams as Houston’s chief rivals, especially the Colts and Titans. Things happen naturally. Maybe, at some point, this in-state rivalry will start to shift and Georgia Southern fans will care more about Georgia State. Maybe it won’t. We just have to let nature run its course.