College Football Rivalry Week - ESPN Grantland

Iceland12 · Nov 26, 2014

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/college-football-2014-week-14-preview-thanksgiving-rivalry-week/

Oh, and there’s a relevant game in the Big Ten, too, where the winner of no. 22 Minnesota vs. no. 14 Wisconsin will claim the B1G West crown and advance to play Ohio State in next week’s conference championship game. But Gophers-Badgers is set to air on the Big Ten Network in the 3:30 ET time slot, opposite Mississippi State–Ole Miss (CBS), Florida–Florida State (ESPN), Notre Dame–USC (Fox), Baylor–Texas Tech (ABC/ESPN2), and Michigan State–Penn State (ABC/ESPN2) on the major national networks, so … good luck finding it.
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2. Paul Bunyan’s Axe (Minnesota vs. Wisconsin): Beaucoup bonus points for the ax literally being a functional tool fit for a giant that could conceivably be deployed for most common ax-like purposes by any human large enough to swing it. This year, the ax will move from its traditional place on the incumbent sideline after an “incident” at the end of last year’s game that nearly led to a brawl. I think that sentence pretty much sums it up.

Iceland12 · Nov 26, 2014

From the same article:'

Above all, rivalry weekend exists to give constructive form to the seething, irrational spite between tribes, which is (as they say in Georgia) the good, clean, old-fashioned way to hash out some deep-seated rifts. But not for Texas and Texas A&M, two factions that recently agreed their relationship had grown so toxic that even convening on the same field, or as members of the same conference, was no longer tenable. The divorce has been hard on everyone.

Before 2012, the Longhorns and Aggies played on or around Thanksgiving day, year-in and year-out, for more than a century. When the series ended for the foreseeable future following A&M’s defection to the SEC, both sides decided to move on by rekindling the “tradition” with someone new: In 2012, Texas spent Thanksgiving getting reacquainted with an old Southwest Conference flame, TCU, and beginning this year Texas A&M has agreed to start seeing a new conference “rival,” LSU. Like two exes pretending not to notice one another from the opposite ends of their favorite old haunts, the games will kick off at the same time Thursday night on competing networks.

Someday, when tensions have eased and the levers of power in the state have been passed down to a new generation — one that takes both A&M’s membership in the SEC and the existence of the Longhorn Network as unobjectionable bastions of the status quo — the series will be renewed, and no one will have the foggiest idea why it ever broke up in the first place. In the meantime, the holiday doubleheader will serve as an annual reminder of just how much hate must still exist to keep the Aggies and Longhorns apart after so long, and also of how perfect these two will always be for each other.

College Football Rivalry Week - ESPN Grantland

Iceland12

Well-known member

Iceland12

Well-known member