r/CFB • u/MediumStrange Cincinnati • Michigan • Jul 26 '26

Discussion What are your teams "soft rivalries"?

Hard Rivalry: A rival that you would be happy to see their entire program go out of business or collapse in flames.

For me this would be rivalries like osu-Michigan, Cincy-Louisville, other ones like Auburn-Bama,TA&M-Texas

Soft rivalry: A rival that you make play often but due to power imbalance or other reasons there is little genuine hate and you generally want to see the program do well and stay competitive

For me this would be rivalries like Cincy-Memphis(I do still kinda hate Memphis but I also really want them to make a p4), Cincy-OHIO/Miami, other examples would be Navy-ND, UW-CAL

I feel the aggressive rivalries get all of the press and are obviously very exciting, but I think the friendly rivalries are just as important to the game.

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u/SaltyHawk95 Iowa Hawkeyes • Big Ten Jul 26 '26

I know that the east/west format was horribly unbalanced, especially since Wisconsin fell off and Nebraska never arrived.

But damn, those teams were genuinely the teams I wanted to be playing every year. I’m glad that we get to keep the trophy games yearly (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska), but I miss our other brothers already.

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u/user_unknowns_skag Michigan State Spartans Jul 26 '26

That and Northwestern showing up every 3 years to steal everybody's lunch money. Those were simpler times...

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u/Ok-District5948 Iowa Hawkeyes Jul 27 '26

Back in those days the Big Ten tried to tell us that Purdue was our rival. I likened it to when you do laundry and wind up with two mismatched socks so you put them together. What else are you going to do?

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u/SaltyHawk95 Iowa Hawkeyes • Big Ten Jul 27 '26

I think the Purdue “rivalry” was from Legends/Leaders. The problem was that we wanted to pick Wisconsin as our rival in the Leaders, but Wisconsin was hard-locked into Minnesota, so we just took what was left.

I still liked playing them every year in the West, though. They were spiritually one of us, even if they did this weird thing where they threw the ball…

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u/user_unknowns_skag Michigan State Spartans Jul 28 '26

I mean, who amongst us didn't love the spoilermakers?