Greatest college football rivalries

It's highly debatable which is the greatest college football rivalry. Depending on what part of the country one hails from, hence which team or teams one roots for, opinions are likely to be vastly different.

Last night yours truly watched some of the Michigan -- Notre Dame game. Michigan prevailed with a 41-30 victory. Thing is -- the announcers trumpeted this match up as the greatest college football rivalry. Certainly this series goes back a long ways -- with no love lost on either side for the other all the while. But calling it the best rivalry of them all seems to be quite a stretch.

Then again, we have to remember these were TV announcers spouting their usual hype. They and their kin will say the same thing about other games when they occur later. Like....

The same Notre Dame and USC.
The same Michigan and Ohio State.
Alabama/Auburn.
Nebraska/Oklahoma.
The triad of Florida, Florida State and Miami.

For that matter, besides a few others, we can throw in Army/Navy and Harvard/Yale. Those series' go WAY back in history, and to their students, fans and alumni, there's no more important game every year. To paint with a broad brush and call any particular match up the greatest rivalry of them all would seem to be foolish indeed. It all depends on who's rooting for who. Always has and always will.

For the purpose of this article, let's zero in on the above-mentioned Michigan and Notre Dame. First things first. For my own reasons, I've never been a fan of Notre Dame. Good grief, even their name, the Fighting Irish, has never made sense. The real Notre Dame is a cathedral in France. Then again, being called the Fighting French might not have the same pizzazz as the Fighting Irish. But it's still wrong. Nevertheless, to their credit, Notre Dame went all the way to the national championship game last year, before being defeated by an obviously superior Alabama team.

On the other hand, Michigan appears to be one of those either you love them or you hate them schools. Granted, they likely have as big and far reaching a fan base as any other school, but the down side is likely their own fault. Over the years, UM has been perceived by many as being arrogant. Some sort of "blue-blooded" (pun intended) aristocrats that think they're better than everybody else.

Head football coach Brady Hoke hasn't helped that sort of perception any. After being hired on to turn around the disastrous rein of former coach Rich Rodriguez, it didn't take him long to start dishing out the trash talk. Hoke raised more than a few eyebrows when he referred to Michigan's age-old football arch-rival Ohio State as merely Ohio. Yes, Hoke and his Wolverines would defeat the Buckeyes in his first year at the helm -- but Ohio State's program was in total upheaval at the time following a scandal that had rocked the football team, the departure of many star players, and sanctions on the university. Last year, under new coach Urban Meyer, though going undefeated, obviously including beating Michigan, OSU was ineligible for a bowl game. Had they been, it's entirely possible they would have faced Alabama instead of Notre Dame for all the marbles. While OSU went 12-0 last year, UM went 8-5. But that's hindsight.

What is very current is Hoke's continued disdain for some of his school's major rivals. Perhaps it's by design, or perhaps he just doesn't know any better, but either way it's feeding once again into the "arrogance" factor -- and that's not good.

Calling Notre Dame "chickens" for cancelling a couple future games with UM is myopic. Notre Dame recently joined the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) for other athletics, but remained an independent in football. But it's more complicated than Brady Hoke seems to know. As a condition of joining the ACC, Notre Dame has to play 5 ACC football opponents every year. Their remaining schedule, as an independent, becomes a numbers game. Only so many to go around. Somebody's gotta go. One of the "cuts" was Michigan and Hoke didn't like it. He might want to rethink his position. If the Michigan game was THAT important to Notre Dame, they would have kept them on their schedule and made cuts elsewhere. But they didn't. One might logically ask -- who needs this match up more? They might further ask -- who indeed is looking down their nose at who?

Despite being a "Michigan man", Brady Hoke might we well advised to stop disrespecting that "Ohio" school in Columbus. Last time I looked, the Buckeyes were ranked #2 in the country, behind only Alabama, and their head coach Urban Meyer doesn't talk a lot of trash. He just wins, wherever he goes, including national championships on his resume.

Brady can do the Hokey-Pokey if he wants. You put your left foot in, you take your left foot out, etc, etc. But if he keeps up with the arrogance, yours truly suspects he's going to wind up with both feet in his mouth -- especially if he keeps taunting Urban Meyer and his formidable Buckeye team.

Hoke's better than Rodriguez, but Urban Meyer he ain't. "Ohio" will be coming to Ann Arbor in November.

We'll see about that.