You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Rivalry Saturday.
That’s what the NCAA calls it.
I like to call it HATE SATURDAY.
No matter what you call it, it’s a great college football weekend. This is the college football weekend when teams that historically hate each other play each other.
Teams hate. Fans hate. Schools hate. Cities hate.
It’s hate-a-thon, a hate-fest, a hate for hate’s sake.
This is the week that fans LOVE to HATE.
Hate till you bleed. Hate till you got nothing left to hate. Hate like there’s no tomorrow.
Give me liberty or give me some HATE.
Bama plays Auburn in the Iron Bowl.
Hate.
Auburn hates Bama. Bama Hates Auburn. They hate each other’s colors. They hate each other’s mascots. They hate each other’s side of the state.
In Alabama, you can’t live in a divided house. You either hate one side or the other and you hate 365 24/7.
As part of Hate Saturday; South Carolina plays Clemson.
Cocks hate Tigers. Tigers hate Cocks.
Hate.
Oregon plays Oregon State.
Ducks hates Beavers. Beavers hate Ducks.
When it comes to the animal kingdom games, someone must lose, animal rights activists be damned.
Either way they hate.
My favorite Hate-a-thon is arguably the best rivalry of the day.
F U C L A plays the mighty Trojans.
Trojans hate Bruins. Bruins hate Trojans.
There’s nothing like screwin a Bruin.
I can personally say I hate UCLA.
Much of L.A. hates UCLA.
Sadly, much of L.A. hates USC.
It’s the biggest rivalry in college football in my estimation for these reasons.
Two perennial football powerhouses play inside the same city, 13 miles apart, in the 2nd biggest city in America, in a city with no NFL team, in a city where you either root for USC as your football team or UCLA as your football team.
HATE HATE HATE.
Bama and Auburn and Florida and Florida State, these other schools are separated by county lines and hundreds of highway miles.
USC vs UCLA?
It’s the battle of Los Angeles. It’s a compressed geographical black hole of hate.
It’s like Thanksgiving with a bottle of gin with all your out of work relatives in one trailer home with only one bathroom. It’s gonna get rough and it’s gonna smell bad.
The battle of Los Angeles is ugly and stinks and makes you choose your hate with colors and pom poms.
Do you hate a mighty steed and a Trojan warrior? Or do you hate a Victoria Secrets bear in a skirt wearing powder blue pajamas?
Pick your hate.
How crazy is the hate?
USC fans wrap Tommy Trojan in the middle of campus like a Trojan wraps something else. That’s because UCLA fans are known to fly helicopters over the venerable statue and dump fecal matter and paint from the sky.
Conversely, The Bruin is now in a box with a sign that reads: Hibernating. Trojan fans couldn’t hate on the bear, so they hated on the bears box.
I’m just saying.
When you gotta hate you gotta hate.
Hate the hate yet?
Not the best rivalry with the most hate, but certainly high up the hate ladder is
Ohio State at Michigan.
Woody Hayes verus Bo Schembechler.
Ohio versus Michigan.
Not only is there hate, on the field, in the stands, in the sports bars, but now there is hate in the Ohio state Capitol.
The governor of Ohio has proclaimed a ban on the letter M.
At least for Saturday, you are ordered to hate it.
You know you are bringing some big time hate when your governor out laws a single letter in the alphabet.
“We do hereby recognize Saturday, November 30, 2013 as ‘Scarlet Letter Saturday’ throughout Ohio,” the resolution said. “[We] encourage all Ohioans to avoid using the letter ‘M’ when possible.”
That’s not easy to do. M is a pretty popular letter in the English language and it tends to show up from time to time.
Taking the proclamation to heart, someone went around the Ohio state campus and put red tape over every M on the Historical Marker dedicated to Woody Hayes.
“It is different,” OSU head coach Urban Meyer said. “It’s not just another game. It’s not, and our players know that. Does that mean we put less value on Indiana or less value on the following week coming up? I didn’t say that. But there is an extra pep in the step.
So the next time you think rivalry, man up. Bring the hate. This ain’t your daddy’s football Saturday.
This is a Saturday full of disdain.
Someone’s gotta lose. Someone’s gotta win.
Either way everyone is gonna hate.
Life’s Crazy™