Now that we are all stuck together forever...

I think we need to start thinking of rivalries etc. I would like to see each team with an in conference rivalry (even if its your second or third due to existing OOC rivalries) and then see the conference start scheduling these rivalries as the last game of the year. We don't really have anything like that.

For UC we need to drop our Miami OH rivalry because its lame, we've won 11 or 12 in a row and nobody gives a crap anymore. Plus I'm tired of going to that crud empty stadium in Oxford, OH every other year.

At this point I'd rather have a rivalry game with an AAC team and it be the last game of the year...

I'm talking football here. Hoops is separate and different....

Who would you have as your AAC rivalry in football and as the last game of the year if it was your call?

To me last game rivalries that are no brainers would be:
USF/UCF
Memphis/Tulsa
or
Tulsa/SMU
SMU/UH

I realize some of these may take time to develop so don't eliminate a team just because currently your fan base doesn't care about said team...this is something that you want to look down the road a few years for...

Obiously Army/Navy isn't budging so Navy will have to work around that (unless Army ends up in the AAC). Some of you may have a last game of year rivalary already. If so, the AAC will have to work around it.
Discuss

For Temple, I'd like Memphis as a rival. I see a lot of similarities between the schools, and in the American I believe the football record is 2-2. The problem under the current arrangement is that with Memphis not in our division, we won't play them for two years. (Except we will play them December 3 this year)
In division then, the FL twins are out, UConn has a rivalry, Cincy has rivalries already, so that leaves ECU. Interestingly, Temple and ECU had a good series of games in the 80's and 90's. Recently, we knocked them out of the top 20 2 years ago, and they had a shot to do the same to us last year.
Geographically though UConn would be the best fit. If only anyone in Philly cared about UConn.
When I think of football rivalries, my definition is this: if you lost every game except against your rival, you would still consider that a successful season.

(10-28-2016 07:01 AM)vick mike Wrote:  For Temple, I'd like Memphis as a rival. I see a lot of similarities between the schools, and in the American I believe the football record is 2-2. The problem under the current arrangement is that with Memphis not in our division, we won't play them for two years. (Except we will play them December 3 this year)
In division then, the FL twins are out, UConn has a rivalry, Cincy has rivalries already, so that leaves ECU. Interestingly, Temple and ECU had a good series of games in the 80's and 90's. Recently, we knocked them out of the top 20 2 years ago, and they had a shot to do the same to us last year.
Geographically though UConn would be the best fit. If only anyone in Philly cared about UConn.
When I think of football rivalries, my definition is this: if you lost every game except against your rival, you would still consider that a successful season.

I could see Temple and UConn as natural geographic rivals (see what I did there, pun wise? lol); we need to get Army and AF in there to add more...

I can't believe that you started a serious thread! I was expecting a Mickey D's vs Burger King type thread when I opened it up.

Navy-SMU has the Gansz Trophy.

As has been said before, rivalries are not "manufactured," they must develop...

UC sits out on an island, geographically. There are no "natural" rivals in this conference as it exists right now, which makes Miami-Ohio all the more valuable. As for them being a MAC school...meh...MAC, AAC...all about the same IMO.

Now we have "history" with several schools in CUSA and seeing as CUSA v.3.0 looks like our fate, I suppose that those histories will have to suffice. But I don't know if they will ever be true rivalries. There is just too much distance (geographically) and too much dis-similarity between the schools to get a real rivalry going, IMO.

But whatever floats your boat.

(10-28-2016 07:27 AM)NavyHusker Wrote:  Navy-SMU has the Gansz Trophy.

True but we can't seem to beat you

Tulsa/Houston - Battle of the Oil Barons (Tulsa - Oil Capital of the World, Houston - the city that stole all the oil companies from said city)

(10-28-2016 07:12 AM)acc4life Wrote:  

(10-28-2016 07:01 AM)vick mike Wrote:  For Temple, I'd like Memphis as a rival. I see a lot of similarities between the schools, and in the American I believe the football record is 2-2. The problem under the current arrangement is that with Memphis not in our division, we won't play them for two years. (Except we will play them December 3 this year)
In division then, the FL twins are out, UConn has a rivalry, Cincy has rivalries already, so that leaves ECU. Interestingly, Temple and ECU had a good series of games in the 80's and 90's. Recently, we knocked them out of the top 20 2 years ago, and they had a shot to do the same to us last year.
Geographically though UConn would be the best fit. If only anyone in Philly cared about UConn.
When I think of football rivalries, my definition is this: if you lost every game except against your rival, you would still consider that a successful season.

I could see Temple and UConn as natural geographic rivals (see what I did there, pun wise? lol); we need to get Army and AF in there to add more...

I'd hate to lose Air Force out of the Mountain West, but having all 3 service academies in one conference (even division) would be cool. And what could be more appropriate than the American? "Simply" replace Air Force with UTEP.

(10-28-2016 07:36 AM)BearcatJerry Wrote:  As has been said before, rivalries are not "manufactured," they must develop...

UC sits out on an island, geographically. There are no "natural" rivals in this conference as it exists right now, which makes Miami-Ohio all the more valuable. As for them being a MAC school...meh...MAC, AAC...all about the same IMO.

Now we have "history" with several schools in CUSA and seeing as CUSA v.3.0 looks like our fate, I suppose that those histories will have to suffice. But I don't know if they will ever be true rivalries. There is just too much distance (geographically) and too much dis-similarity between the schools to get a real rivalry going, IMO.

But whatever floats your boat.

Yep. Heck, despite the fact UC has played both Memphis and Tulsa over 30 times each in football and neither are what you are called rivalry games. The geographic distance is definitely a factor.

I disagree with you slightly on the Miami, O series. The Battle for the Victory Bell has gotten stale. Both schools would probably benefit by not playing each other for a little while (Miami always has a challenging schedule OOC and not having UC on the schedule could give them an extra win). Since we are not going to get to play Louisville, Pitt, WVU, Purdue or someone else local on the regular, I'd say it would be more beneficial to schedule Ohio or Marshall on a regular basis instead for a while.

(10-28-2016 08:15 AM)TUCandoit Wrote:  Tulsa/Houston - Battle of the Oil Barons (Tulsa - Oil Capital of the World, Houston - the city that stole all the oil companies from said city)

My thoughts exactly.

Honorable mentions: SMU, Memphis, UCF

(10-28-2016 07:36 AM)BearcatJerry Wrote:  As has been said before, rivalries are not "manufactured," they must develop...

Diaco thinks naturally developing rivalries is ridiculous.

Tuberville should make a trophy for the Navy game, call it the B&O Railroad Rumble. Boom. Rivalry started.

(10-28-2016 08:50 AM)BePcr07 Wrote:  I'd hate to lose Air Force out of the Mountain West, but having all 3 service academies in one conference (even division) would be cool. And what could be more appropriate than the American? "Simply" replace Air Force with UTEP.

We don't have UTEP to give them up, so we'll need to do some horse trading. We get Air Force, you get UTEP, and CUSA gets Tulane. Deal?

(10-28-2016 07:01 AM)vick mike Wrote:  For Temple, I'd like Memphis as a rival. I see a lot of similarities between the schools, and in the American I believe the football record is 2-2. The problem under the current arrangement is that with Memphis not in our division, we won't play them for two years. (Except we will play them December 3 this year)
In division then, the FL twins are out, UConn has a rivalry, Cincy has rivalries already, so that leaves ECU. Interestingly, Temple and ECU had a good series of games in the 80's and 90's. Recently, we knocked them out of the top 20 2 years ago, and they had a shot to do the same to us last year.
Geographically though UConn would be the best fit. If only anyone in Philly cared about UConn.
When I think of football rivalries, my definition is this: if you lost every game except against your rival, you would still consider that a successful season.

Like you said, Houston, Memphis, or UCF would be the go-to's for us because of the old CUSA rivalries, but Houston and Memphis are in the West. Plus, rivalries need to be driveable, even if it's a bit painstaking. Plenty of pirates would show up in Memphis for the Liberty Bowls in 2009 and 2010, so people would show up. But again, different division now. UCF is out, or at least secondary, because of their new rivalry with USF under the OP's guidelines.

That leaves Temple and Cincy. You guys (Temple) are closer, so we'll take you guys unless UConn has already asked you to prom. Sucks that our closest team is still a 7 hour drive.

The American East has USF-UCF.

If Rutgers had stayed, Rutgers-Temple could have been interesting since the schools are only 90 miles apart, and Rutgers-UConn in football was a very even series during our time in the Big East together.

I'd be tempted to have Temple end the season with ECU and Cincinnati-UConn. Nothings natural there but it's a new conference.

Now that there's a conference championship, the conference could schedule the week before developing rivalries instead of trying to put a supposed conference championship together. The problem is, none of them are natural. The Big East had the Backyard Brawl and the Keg o' Nails, but those are sadly in the past.

East
Temple - UConn
USF - UCF
That leaves ECU - Cincinnati

West
SMU - Houston
Memphis - Tulsa
That leaves Navy - Tulane

or maybe
SMU - Navy
Houston - Tulane
Memphis - Tulsa

Must be divisional games because crossovers aren't played every year.

(10-28-2016 07:36 AM)BearcatJerry Wrote:  As has been said before, rivalries are not "manufactured," they must develop...

Yes and No. If we did commit to setting up some division games that always take place at the end of the season, like the OP said, it could be a good catalyst. In most years, one of those games would decide the division. If it happened a couple of times, boom. Rivalry.

Opening myself up to so much scrutiny right now, but...initial proposal. Open to negotiation.

East:
UCF-USF
Cincy-UConn
Temple-ECU

West:
Houston-SMU
Memphis-Tulsa
Navy-Tulane? (Why the fug is Navy in the West!)

We're in a down year, so I know the Temple fans will jump on me. We can swap and do ECU-Cincy and Temple-UConn if you want. We're not close to anyone geographically....except Navy...in the frickin West.

Cincinnati and Tulsa are perfect rivals.

Rivalries do develop "on their own" and naturally....however in our instance we need a "nudge"

(10-28-2016 09:55 AM)KNIGHTTIME Wrote:  Cincinnati and Tulsa are perfect rivals.

If they aren't divisional, then you're playing the odds. You'd have a better chance of an annual Cincy-Uconn game deciding the East division than Cincy-Tulsa deciding whether they both play again in the conf. championship.

This is the reason why, if you look at week 17 in the NFL, it's all division games. No exceptions. A handful of those games decide the division winner, which makes the games better to watch.

I agree the rivalries have to be in the same division, and somewhat natural. For me, in the West, I would have:

Tulsa-Houston
SMU-Navy (Navy wants to be in the west to play in Texas for service recruiting)
Memphis-Tulane

Or perhaps swap Tulsa and Memphis and have Tulsa-Tulane (both private) and Memphis-Houston (both large urban public)

The East would be:

USF-UCF, of course.
Then I'm not sure. I think the other 4 could be interchangeable. UC/Temple/UConn/ECU.