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The Red River Shootout kicks off in a few hours, and while the later TV slot didn’t work out (today’s early games are lacking), that’s not what’s driving the lack of atmosphere this year. That lack—to the extent it exists; this is still a decently big game—comes from Georgia’s presence on Texas’s schedule next week, and from Texas A&M–Texas renewing on Thanksgiving weekend.
There are plenty of different types of rivalries in college football. Some are so nasty that it’s hard to schedule the games, with the athletic departments themselves not fond of one another. Some are friendlier, the schools holding hands as they cross realignment bridges. The Red River Shootout is among the latter. Texas and Oklahoma fans want to beat one another, and they get under one another’s skins, and during the game itself the rivalry matters quite a bit. But for the other 51 weeks of the year, Texas and Oklahoma can coexist. It’s easier for a Texas person to be friends with an Oklahoma person than is true between UT and A&M, or between OU and Oklahoma State. Texas and Texas A&M serve different corners of the populace. A lot of Texas students could just as well have gone to school in Norman.
Rivalry categories, with an example or two for each:
Friendly Rivalries
We’ve covered Texas/Oklahoma already. I’d offer Notre Dame’s rivalry with USC is fairly friendly as well. USC and Notre Dame are one another’s biggest rival, but the schools are the right combination of similar enough and separate enough for the rivalry to not become out-and-out hate. This could change fairly easily—each brand is gross enough to the other that the hate could erupt—but meetings are rarely existential. There’ll always be another one the following year.
Hot Wars
We can assume most in-state rivalries are legitimately nasty, for reasons NIT Stu explained three years ago. Kansas State and Kansas people are very different from one another. Ditto Mississippi State and Ole Miss. One noteworthy interstate hot war is, of course, Michigan/Ohio State, a game so big that it would rarely be shocking to see the losing coach fired over it. There are annoying gimmicks around that one, but the rivalry is real. It’s bigger than the Big Ten Championship for both these schools.
LSU/Alabama has dabbled in this territory at times, but I’m not sure it’s ever fully broken through. Back in the Les Miles era, there was still a little bit of “SEC vs. America” going on which gave the loser a convenient line to tell themselves. (That line being that this game was the real national championship.)
Cold Wars
Aside from Florida/Georgia, which has gone cold lately despite being actively played, the first one that comes to mind here is Notre Dame/Michigan. The second is Bedlam, though that’s still simmering, colder but not yet cold.
A cold war is not cold because of an absence of emotion. It’s cold because of an absence of active conflict. Michigan and Notre Dame struggle to schedule one another. Oklahoma and Oklahoma State haven’t figured it out. Texas and Texas A&M were in this boat until this season. In each case—Michigan/ND and Texas/A&M especially—the universities represent such different groups of people that there’s a personal element which doesn’t exist as much in Texas/Oklahoma or Notre Dame/USC. This is the status any number of in-state rivalries would move into were they to also stop being played. Hot war stakes, but without the active play.
Sleeping Giants
Which rivalries are waiting to ignite? One to watch would be the Bourbon Barrel, the Indiana/Kentucky series which hasn’t been played since 2005. If Curt Cignetti can make Indiana football mean something and if Mark Stoops keeps doing well at Kentucky, that could become a fun one with some legitimate antipathy attached. Among others, watch Texas A&M and in-state schools, especially Baylor and Texas Tech, against whom A&M used to play in both the Southwest Conference and the Big 12. I don’t know if it’s something about A&M, something about the state of Texas, or something about both, but proximity between those schools tends to escalate the loathing.
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The big outcomes the last two nights, at least from a playoff perspective, were James Madison trouncing Coastal Carolina and Arizona State taking down Utah. UNLV won comfortably over Utah State, but that was expected. Northwestern blew out Maryland, and that’s a big deal, but it’s a big deal in two or three specific niches.
The degree of JMU’s blowout win was a big deal. It points towards the ULM loss having more to do with ULM being sneakily competitive and less to do with JMU not being a very good team. JMU’s probably pretty good. The win wasn’t enough to make this a two-horse race again—Boise State still leads the Group of Five by a wide margin—but in our model’s simulations this morning, the Dukes are ahead of Liberty again and barely behind Tulane.
As for Utah…
Classic Utah, I guess. After seeming to play it so safe with Cam Rising, they seemed to rush him back. Then, they made a bizarre fourth down decision, their defense wilted in big moments, and suddenly Arizona State’s 5–1 and the Utes, a former Big 12 favorite, are probably relegated to playing spoiler.
Movelor was always higher on K-State and lower on Utah than the consensus, but it does still have this Utah team in the top 30. They’re not bad. They just can never string together enough good play to make something big happen. That’s been the case for them for 15 years now. Are they overachieving what Utah football should reasonably be? Maybe. But the program is always stuck around four losses.
As for the Sun Devils…
Don’t get the hopes too high just yet. There’s already that conference loss on the team sheet, and there are still trips remaining to Cincinnati, Stillwater, and Manhattan, not to mention Tucson. ASU is not a Big 12 contender right now. But they’re about to clinch bowl eligibility, and they did just knock off Utah. Both those things are a big deal.
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Resources for today:
- Our Week 7 preview.
- Our model’s CFP Bracketology
- Movelor’s ratings and our model’s playoff probabilities
- Movelor’s Week 7 picks
Bark.
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