​Let me explain. On July 11, 2011, I had only been writing sports for a couple of years—working for a Nebraska site that had been set up by a Texas site attempting to launch a Big 12 network. The Texas site eventually joined SB Nation and reassigned a few of us to their respective team sites; in my case, Corn Nation. Around four months into my new CN tenure, the Huskers officially joined the Big Ten as their 12th member. One of my favorite things about college sports is the rivalry and the pure, playful hatred of other schools. It’s the kind of edge that makes Saturdays even more entertaining, turning up games beyond the ones featuring your team.
Is Navy pressing an upset bid against Notre Dame? Perfect. Colorado already down 21-0 to Oregon in the first quarter? Bartender—ESPN2, please. Is Arch Manning faltering on the big stage again? Texas and ABC, chop-chop. You get the idea. Rivalry in sport should be fun, and it’s okay to twist the knife a little when there are misdeeds behind the scenes. But attacking other teams’ fans (or even inanimate targets like ancient trees—ALABAMA) or engaging in real-life harassment isn’t acceptable.
So, I thought it would be fun to speculate which of our new conference brethren might be the ones that push our blood pressure the most in the new league. Goodbye to Texas, Colorado, Kansas State, and Oklahoma. Hello to… who?
I won’t reprint the whole piece here, but you can click the title below to read it again. I often cringe at my older work because I believe experience has made me better, yet this piece still holds up and it brings back memories of preparing for a new era—and having a little fun while doing it. The premise was simple: devise a percentage ranking for how likely conference rivalries were to spill over into something more intense. I dubbed it the Rage Potential Factor, or RPF. I still like the concept, and here was my description of the highly scientific process used to assign a number from 1 to 100%:
– Do the teams’ antics make you long for an Al Qaeda kidnapping scheme? (Think Miami in the 80s to early 90s.)
– Does the coach’s face on TV make you want to give him the “Colin Quinn ‘Dick On’” treatment? (And no, I’m not explaining what that treatment is. There’s no hidden meaning.)
– Is the fanbase a collection of drunken, abusive chuckmonkeys or insufferably arrogant snots? (Notre Dame practically holds the patent on the latter.)
– Any other intangibles deemed necessary (an odd state or region, weird behavior from locals, a bad Stuckey’s experience—this is unabashed grab bag).
As I said, you can click above to view the original article where I included a few sentences about each team. Below is the final score I arrived at for everyone and the original final description. I’m simply going to look back and self-grade myself on each as low, high, or pretty close for better SEO. The piece runs to at least 500 words.