There are natural rivalries that develop by local geography (Pitt-PSU, Pitt-WVU, USC-UCLA, Alabama-Auburn). There are rivalries that develop from years of strong conference battles for supremacy (Michigan-Ohio State, Tennessee-Florida, Oklahoma-Texas).
The worst thing that can be done, though, is for conferences to try and make a rivalry. For years, anyone and everyone has rightly lambasted the “Land Grant Trophy” game between Penn St. and Michigan St. as some juryrigged attempt by the Big 11 to give PSU a “rivalry” game in the conference to make them seem like more a part of the conference.
Unfortunately for Pitt fans, the Big East decided to do the same for Cinci by pairing them with Pitt for the River City Rivalry.
The Big East wasn’t trying to play that up at Media Day. Instead they were trying to talk up other possible rivalries.
“I think we’re a lot different than a year ago,” said Tranghese. “Last year we hadn’t played a game yet. It was all new. Now we’ve played each other and started to develop some rivalries and see what everyone is about.”
But who? There’s some effort to make L-ville and WVU rivals, but that only happens if they remain the top two teams in the league for a longer period than just a couple years.
The funny thing is the coaches aren’t even buying. The Big East office pushes the story, the media asks the coaches and, well…
Maybe someday, if Michael Tranghese’s vision for the Big East takes shape, Rutgers’ table won’t be placed so close to UConn’s.
The Big East commissioner opened the program by harping on the importance of rivalry development in the Big East, especially in the wake of the conference’s major shake-up and the addition of new teams last year.
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For UConn, the closest Big East football schools geographically are Rutgers (Piscataway, N.J.) and Syracuse (upstate New York).Edsall said he is still not sure where UConn’s most heated rivalries will develop.
“We’ve only been playing some of these teams for three years and I don’t know if you develop a rivalry in three years,” Edsall said. “You want those things to happen and I think they will. You can see some signs of things maybe getting a little bit closer to that. I think there’s a potential rivalry to be had with Syracuse and with Rutgers because of a proximity standpoint and some of the things that have already happened through the basketball end of it.”
Edsall, however, has a difficult time fitting Rutgers into his own conditions for a rivalry.
“To me, when you have rivalries I think it’s usually an in-state thing or bordering states or it’s just a history of playing for a long time,” Edsall said. “I think in the short history with [Rutgers], we’ve beaten them a few times, they beat us last year. The scores have been very close the last few years. It’s something you see that might be happening.”
Schiano said he would love to see a rivalry develop between UConn and Rutgers, but he doesn’t want to see it forced just for marketing.
For UConn fans, based on basketball, they want the rivalry to be with Syracuse. The ‘Cuse, though, might not be so interested as UConn is such a new team in football. Besides, the Orange have enough problems with football at the moment as summarized in the title to this article:
SU football trying to keep hope alive
Now, that’s the way to market to fans.
