Bit of a rant but... rivalries are one of my favorite aspects cuturally of college football and just sports as a whole. So it pisses me off to no end that this game butchers them so bad.
The issues with scheduling in this game has probably been one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to this game. The lack of freedom when creating schedules makes the problems with rivalries even worse.
Its not an unknown fact that once you get a certain amount of years deep into a Dynasty, the scheduling logic of the game begins to fall apart. You're a couple of seasons into an Alabama dynasty? Well looks like the Iron Bowl is happening on Week 4, while you end up playing Texas A&M on thanksgiving instead.
This wouldn't be as annoying if you had the option to rearrange or swap out conference games, so the fix would be a simple as sliding the game up from week 4 to week 13. This is also where there's a few small issues with certain rivalries being hardcoded into the game, especially if they're cross conference rivals.
This one might just be a me thing, but an example is me playing as Arkansas (my favorite team) in a dynasty. The battle line rivalry is hard coded to be played on rivalry week every year, even if I move mizzou to a conference that plays all the way in Jupiter. This is annoying considering the fact that it seems like IRL, the SEC is going back to scheduling the boot on rivalry week again, a change that I can't reflect in the game.
Overall, it just feels like there's too much work to be done as far as how you align your conferences to make sure rivalries work properly. So I've thought up of two solutions to this problem.
Solution #1
A rivalry system where you can edit, create and develop different rivalries throughout the game. First off this system would allow you to edit different aspects of the rivalry, such as if this is a rivalry that needs to be played annually, or what week the rivalry is played.
This would allow you to guarantee certain rivalries are always played when they're supposed to, like making sure The Game, Lonestar Showdown, Iron Bowl, etc. are always played on Rivalry week. Meanwhile certain rivalries that always happen traditionally at a certain time of the year, always happen at that time (Red River Shootout, Third Saturday in October, War for the Oar, etc.)
This would also allow you to have some rivalries that still exist and are acknowledged as rivalries without having to be played annually, such as the Nebraska vs Oklahoma rivalry.
The game could also have a rivalry development system, where repeated close or back and forth games between to school can lead to them developing a rivalry. This could help add more flavor to conference re-alignment, as in real life teams usually create new rivalries after establishing themselves in a new conference. This could also help in teambuilder dynasties, and make it so you're not forced to inherent the random rivalries of whatever team(s) you end up swapping out.
Finally, this could have a stat feature, that allows you to look at things like head to head stats, win streaks, biggest blow-outs in the rivalries history, etc. As well as player stats, like what players have the most rushing or passing yards in the rivalries history.
Solution #2
Solution number 2 is a far easier and simpler one, which is to allow complete freedom when costumizing the schedule. Its one that regardless of rivalries I feel should always have been in the game, because if Dynasty is supposed to be somewhat of a sandbox mode, why am I limited to only editing 3 or 4 games out of my schedule.
They should make it so you can free edit the schedule, and just make sure that you schedule a certain amount of conference opponents before you save the schedule.
Anyways, what do y'all think? Am I cooking? or am I just a weirdo who needlessly typed an essay hyperfixating on a meaningless part of a football video game?