The Florida State Seminoles’ season-from-hell—going from an undefeated season to being one of the worst teams in the country—could have been saved if they could only beat the Florida Gators.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, but as I watched the game, I saw a little more fight than usual. In fact, many of last Saturday’s rivalry games were extra feisty, especially Ohio State vs. Michigan, which ended in a fistfight and some Mace spray. I walked away from the TV after the FSU-UF game disappointed, but proud of the fight the boys showed. Victory in that one game can overpower the heartache of ten losses. As a kid, I remember the tension immobilizing my dad and uncle as they watched the Sunshine Showdown. When I grew up, I didn’t just notice the tension, I lived it. You don’t adopt rivalries; you’re born with them.
When vast conference realignments occurred this past summer, some commentators began to ask whether rivalry games were worth it. Sport Illustrated reported that college football rivalries were going extinct; The New York Times claimed we’re watching the end. Yet some have claimed that getting rid of rivalry games is nothing short of ripping the soul out of college football. Sadly, this move away from local communities isn’t unique to college football. It’s a symptom of a world barreling towards globalized notions of utopia.
Global economies displace local business. Headquartered in one part of the world, they often export the making of their product to another country, and then a separate company handles distribution. This elaborate mass-production-machine out-produces a local shop every day of the week. Individuals feel this too—just look on social media. You’ll feel a relentless pressure to travel the globe in search of a “multicultural” experience. After the advent of the telegram, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” He observed that the power of immediate communication over long distances necessitated that we must communicate over those national distances. Social media shows us new places, so we go to those new places. We’re prodded away from our old local cultures into an amorphous “One Human” culture, not because it’s better, but because we can.
College football rivalries originated long ago. They sprouted up from the competitive spirit of local communities and their school. The games were and are always chippy. I remember my dad’s stories about traveling to The Swamp, Florida’s stadium, every other year only to be pelted with empty beer cans by Gator fans. Why are these games so much more tense than others? There’s a particular closeness that breeds passion. Gainesville and Tallahassee are only separated by an hour-and-a-half drive, and it’s not uncommon to know families where the husband is an FSU fan and the wife is an UF fan, or vice versa. FSU fathers shall teach their sons to hate Gators—the animal included. Then there’s the added factor that a lot of the players on the field grew up competing against one another, whether in high school or some other league. Familiarity breeds competitiveness. Anytime I do anything with my brother, there’s an added layer of intensity. The closeness, both geographically and emotionally, between fans and players springs from the local culture. Oftentimes the players participate in local activities, and both sets of fans come from the same places. They grew up in old Florida near the gulf coast. It’s a very different region to the tourism saturated middle and south Florida. The natives of these places claim the Big Bend as their home, so when the ‘Noles and the Gators play, they’re playing for more than bragging rights, they’re playing for local domination.
In his essay called “Damage,” that great defender of local culture Wendell Berry retells how his farming efforts injured the land—the very same land that he loves and cherishes like his own kin. When I stand in Doak Campbell Stadium along with 85,000 others, I know no one save the people I came with. Yet, I’ll rub elbows with a few garnet and gold clad folks as I shimmy to my seat, who are the same folks I’ll high-five deliriously when we score. That same closeness also produces hatred for a common foe. The damage Berry mistakenly inflicts upon the land comes from his relationship to it, and this closeness allows him to recognize the damage and seek to correct it. Rivalries born in local communities understand this familiarity. Their rivalries are family affairs. Competition within family is a healthy byproduct, and games cultivate companionship in their own way. It used to be that local communities went to war together; in a lesser way, that’s what these football rivalries recreate. Commentators love to use the word “tribalism” to describe rivalries. Some might frown upon this as archaic; I say more power to it!
And don’t confuse ‘rivalries’ like FSU vs. Clemson with what I’m talking about. Those come as a result of both being nationally competitive and conference rivals. As a consequence, the games are nationally televised, and this manufactured hype creates an artificial rivalry. True rivalries come from deep roots set in a place, which is why it’s possible for two terrible teams to still be fierce rivals. FSU and Clemson really aren’t rivals anymore, at least the fans don’t see them like that. Conference realignment and NIL deals are the latest innovations to take hold of college sports, and the specter in the machine is the same as always: an insatiable human fascination with the motto ‘bigger is better.’ These changes don’t improve the actual games—they create more artificial rivalries.
Shuffling the conferences endangers these local rivalries. How does adding California teams to the Atlantic Coast Conference even make sense? How about adding Pacific Northwest powerhouses like Oregon and Washington to the historical Midwestern Big Ten? Advocates for the realignment defend this evolution in the game with a guarantee of more ‘meaningful’ games between top tier teams. The infamous Colin Cowherd claimed that he didn’t care about the rivalries; he cared about seeing ‘the best play the best.’ How could fans not buy that? Ratings will go through the roof! Yet this philosophy kills local rivalries and replaces them with sterile matches based on the arbitrary rankings of a national committee.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to defend an ‘everyone wins’ philosophy. However, the best of the best still exists: it’s called the playoffs. But on the Saturday after Thanksgiving known as Rivalry Weekend, I want the Florida State Seminoles playing the Florida Gators regardless of their rankings.
College football is a local endeavor that should be enacted by those with a connection to that place. What do these changes offer us then? And at what cost? This machine—dressed as a superfan of “college football”—is designed to make money. Odds are that they will continually ‘realign’ conferences until every game is a doozy. Then maybe we can enjoy the actual football, right? In reality, fans care about their team, and that team has something to do with the place they were born or went to school. Fanhood requires a real, tangible connection to a local culture. The loss of these cherished rivalries is the loss of local cultures.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
