[NU Sports] Classic, thy name is Northwestern ...

[Michael Vance]

The two-rivalry idea actually didn't get officially instituted until a 
couple years into scheduling Penn State.  They started out with a 
handful of schools having two rivals -- the WI-MN-IA triad; Michigan 
against OSU and MSU; and MSU against Michigan and PSU (more on that 
later) -- but quickly realized that would be unfair and eventually even 
impossible to keep a balanced schedule with that in effect.  So they 
came up with the others.  Yeah, we were a victim of geography.

Interesting thing about MSU's rivalries: Of course, the only one that 
MSU cares about is Michigan, in the same way that the only thing that a 
little brother cares about is one day being able to beat up his older, 
bigger sibling.  But MSU and PSU were the first two Land-Grant colleges 
chartered a few days apart in 1855 (MSU first, then PSU), so someone 
decided that the "Land Grant Trophy" would be a good idea.  Most Spartan 
fans didn't really care, many still don't.  They feel like they got 
"stuck", too, and with a contrived trophy at that.

The other thing that I found a little odd, is that if you look back to 
the 10-team conference's traditional season-ending rivalry games, MSU 
and Wisconsin always ended up getting stuck playing each other, yet 
never developed much of a rivalry of their own.  I realize that there 
were years that NU-Illinois wasn't a season-ending game (the 1991 "Rain 
Bowl" comes to mind), and that allowed the conference to shuffle some 
others, too, but all the "normal" years that ended with Mich/OSU, IU-PU, 
NU-Illinois, and MN-IA, there were poor Sparty and Bucky playing each other.

OK, maybe I'm the only one who finds that interesting.  :-)

-Michael

Jonathan Hodges wrote:
> Here are the "protected" rivalries for each Big Ten team (there are a
> maximum of 2 each that are played every year - the other 8 teams in the
> conference rotate off of the schedule every so often):
>
> Northwestern: Illinois, Purdue
> Illinois: Northwestern, Indiana
> Purdue: Indiana, Northwestern
> Indiana: Purdue, Illinois
> Wisconsin: Minnesota, Iowa
> Minnesota: Wisconsin, Iowa
> Iowa: Minnesota, Wisconsin
> Michigan State: Penn State, Michigan
> Michigan: Michigan State, Ohio State
> Ohio State: Michigan, Penn State
> Penn State: Ohio State, Michigan State
>
> I'm not going to list the "trophy games" because as discussed earlier, there
> are a ton of them.  After Penn State joined the conference and the current
> scheduling strategy was developed, the conference obviously had a tough time
> deciding the "natural" rivalries - especially for newcomer PSU (they ended
> up going with MSU-PSU and OSU-PSU probably because of proximity and
> availability).  The Minnesota-Wisconsin-Iowa rivalry triangle has been
> around for some time, so that made sense - but left no room for anyone else
> (e.g. NU-UW).  Therefore in the middle of the conference region (Illinois
> and Indiana) it appears that they adopted a "neighbor rivalry" strategy with
> NU-Purdue and Illinois-Indiana which are not necessarily natural rivals.
>
> In any case there is not much the B10 can do unless that 12th member shows
> up, which is an entirely other discussion altogether.  A complete
> round-robin 10 game conference schedule won't happen because that would
> leave only 2 NC games which would put B10 teams at too much of a
> disadvantage (and wouldn't allow 7 or 8 home games like now).
>
> Personally, I would prefer NU's 2 "rivals" to be Wisconsin and Illinois
> since those are 2 rather competitive series all-time.  But, I can understand
> why not.
>
> Jonathan
>
>
> On 10/6/07, CHerron604 at aol.com <CHerron604 at aol.com> wrote:
>   
>> Does anybody remember the rationale for making Purdue our 'other'
>> protected
>> conference foe ?  Illinois was obvious - Did Wisconsin already have
>> 2  natural
>> rivals (Minnesota, obviously).
>>
>> PS - Doesn't Minnesota have natural rivalries with Iowa (Floyd), Wisconsin
>> (Paul's axe) and Michigan (the jug) ?  Does one of those disappear
>> from  time
>> to time ?
>>
>> Chuck Herron   Tech '85
>>
>>
>>
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