Posted by ESPN.com's Ted Miller
Why can't we all just get along? Because it's college football.
Pac-10's five most bitter rivalries
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1. USC-UCLA: Sure, there are big-time state rivalries, but how many legitimate national powers occupy the same city? And talk about wild swings of momentum: UCLA won eight in a row from 1991-98, then USC won seven in a row from 1999-2005. New Bruins coach Rick Neuheisel's prime directive is to restore balance to the rivalry. His and Pete Carroll's frenetic energy and relentless enthusiasm -- and tendency to be glib -- figure to make for a very entertaining future.
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2.
Arizona-Arizona State: Perhaps the nation's most underrated rivalry, as
I found out first-hand. There's a rational basis for the extreme dislike -- UA tried to stop ASU from becoming an accredited university in the 1950s -- but it's festered into the sort of joyful, spiteful irrationality that fuels, say, Auburn-Alabama.
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3.
Oregon-Washington: Oh, this one used to be so much fun! The heyday had to be the Rick Neuheisel Era at Washington, when both teams were regulars in the top-half of the national polls (Neuheisel: Oregon is a propaganda machine. Mike Bellotti: I'm insulted. Neuheisel: I meant that in a nice way. Bellotti: That's stupid.) But with the Huskies languishing, this one has lost some of its steam.
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4.
California-Stanford: Hey, it's the Big Game. And it's on an upswing with the arrival of Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh, who handed Jeff Tedford his first defeat in six games in the rivalry last fall. Moreover, no other Division I-A rivalry game matches two more academically elite institutions, which means the post-game emails tend to be Faulknarian in their darkness and tangled verbosity.
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5.
Washington-Washington State: This one nips Oregon-Oregon State in large part because I've been a first-hand witness to this peculiar hate-fest. Remember when WSU won 10 games three consecutive seasons? Each included a bitter loss to inferior Huskies teams (at least in terms of national rankings), part of the Cougars six-game losing streak in the series from 1998-2003. After the Huskies prevailed at WSU in triple-overtime in 2002, Cougars fans spent a half-hour
hurling bottles and other trash onto the field. A Tacoma News Tribune reporter actually sustained a concussion from one bottle.
Ted Miller has been covering college football since 1997, starting with Auburn and then heading West to Washington and the Pac-10. His columns for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer won first place in 2007 APSE Best Writing contest. The Atlanta native and University of Richmond graduate presently lives with his wife in Scottsdale, Ariz.
