For years, the debate has lingered: Which two schools are the fiercest rivals?
Time after time, week after week, schools stake claim to show how their rivalry is better than anothers. Being a resident of Los Angeles, I have been surrounded by the USC-UCLA rivalry since I was a child, regardless of the fact that I was unaware of the significance.
In recent years, I have seen how rivalry games are unlike any other games, where any national rankings or favoritism from the oddsmakers goes right out the window. An example of this is the 2006 USC-UCLA meeting at the Rose Bowl. USC entered the game with a national championship berth in sight as the no. 2 ranked team in the nation, a stellar defense, and an offense that had collapsed in just one game earlier in the season to Oregon State.
In that game, UCLA showed that regardless of their rivals ranking, rivalry games are played on passion for the game, and most of all, pride and the Victory Bell.
Other big name rivalry games I have watched through the years are USC-Notre Dame, Arizona-Arizona State, Cal-Stanford, Ohio State-Michigan, Florida-Florida State, Miami-Florida State, Oregon-Oregon State, Michigan-Michigan State, Wisconsin-Minnesota. Although most of these games provide more of a intruiging matchup for the fans of those colleges, to me, the USC-Notre Dame/UCLA is one of the most spirited rivalries in all of college football, as throughout the years, those games determined who would win the Heisman Trophy, who would appear in the national championship, who would take the conference crown, and who would walk away with the rivalry trophy.
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