Who were our best football rivals each decade?
by BirdGT on Apr 15, 2010 12:00 PM EDT
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PrintThe most common phrase uttered by commentators during a Clemson-Georgia Tech football game is something along the lines of, "The Clemson-GT game has been decided by one possession 30 times out of 75 contests. Since 1990, the game has been decided by 5 points or fewer 16 times out 21 contests." Today, I'm looking at the idea that margin of victory determines the quality of a rivalry. And by "rivalry," I'm referring to a series that lasts longer than a mere home-home series. Therefore, all of the teams I'll be referring to are former independents, SEC, or ACC squads that have played lengthy series.
The first thing I did was I truncated the entire football history of GT down to 1950-present. I felt like that would encompass the GT fan-hood of at least 99% of our readers. Then, I broke that data set into decades: the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, and 00's. I removed teams that only played a limited set of games against us (e.g. bowl opponents or random home-home series). And finally, I pulled out the records in those decades and average margin of victory within those decades to create this chart of Georgia Tech's 23 biggest rivals since 1950:
The list is a pretty big chunk of the major players in the Southeast as it includes 10 current ACC members, 9 current SEC squads, Notre Dame, Navy, SMU, and Tulane. Boston College didn't quite make the cut as we've only played them sparingly since 1972.
If we were to base quality of rivalries on margin of victory (assuming all of the games were close not reciprocating blowouts), then we'd have three different kinds of rivalries, in my opinion. We'd have the exciting rivalries where the margin of victory is almost zero (Closest). We'd have the boring rivalries where we always blew out the opposition (Easiest). And we'd have the terrible rivalries where the opponent is usually beating us by a wide margin (Toughest).
There aren't many surprises in this list of rivals except Maryland coming is as the most exciting rival in the 2000's. In retrospect, however, all of the recent Maryland games have been nail biters. The average margin of victory in the 2000's was less than one point. And not surprisingly, the Clemson game since 1990 has an average margin of victory of just under 3 points.
What do you think? How should rivalries be rated? Tradition? Passion? Proximity? Win/Loss Record?
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I thought I understood but . . .
maybe I read too fast. You define closest, easiest and toughest but then you put SMU in the category of closest and toughest in the 1950’s. I thought closest meant close games and I thought toughest meant blowouts in which we were on the losing end. How can SMU be both closest and toughest in the same decade?
by Atlanta's original team on Apr 15, 2010 1:01 PM EDT reply actions
Because we blew everybody out in the '50's.
SMU was the only team that competed with us.
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more clarification
I tried to limit the closest, easiest, and toughest to teams that we played at least 5-6 games with during that decade. The only rival teams that outscored us in the 50’s were Notre Dame and South Carolina but we only played USC once during the 50’s and ND twice so I didn’t think they deserved consideration for the ’50’s toughest rival.
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All Time (1950-Present)
Closest – Miami (Average Margin of Defeat 0.400 points)
Easiest – Vandy (Average Margin of Victory 20.9 points)
Toughest – Notre Dame (Average Margin of Defeat 11.7 points)
Features of the Perfect Car: 201 cubic inch displacement, 40 horsepower, 3.77:1 drive ratio, single barrel carburetor, top speed of 65 mph
Great post
MOV is a tough stat in football because there are so few games. One blowout can really affect the numbers. Probably why you always hear “x games decided by 3 points or less” instead of the average margin of victory. I think it would interesting to see percentage of games decided by 3 points or maybe even 7 points or less for each series since we joined the ACC.
Clemson always feels like the biggest conference rivarly game to me and VT is quickly becoming one. I like both of these rivalries since they really bring the fans and interest to the games. FSU certainly did this in 90s but we no longer play them every year.
Duke, UNC, Wake, UVA, BC. and Maryland just don’t have the buzz of the other series. Miami is hard for me to classify. Might just be because I have never been to a “classic” GT/Miami game.
2006 was the best Miami game in recent memory
2005 was very good too. Those, next to the Auburn wins, were Reggie Ball’s finest moments.
Features of the Perfect Car: 201 cubic inch displacement, 40 horsepower, 3.77:1 drive ratio, single barrel carburetor, top speed of 65 mph
Agreed
Clearly Clean Old Fashioned Hate is the number one rivalry, but outside of that I was going to go with Auburn > Clemson > Miami. And since you mentioned him, those were all the best games by Ball and Gailey. As much as people knock those two, we won more than we lost and we did so consistently for seven years, taking out some pretty big hitters at the time all the while. I like where we are now, but those teams were, especially the Tenuta defense, were still fun to me.
"You could spend the next fifteen seconds of your life watching a man and a tiger scream together, or you could be an idiot."
Fact.
2005 was mainly great because it was an upset.
though it may have been Tenuta’s best game.Both offenses were completely overmatched. I believe that was the same week they annouced we were going to have to vacate wins from the O’Leary era, which was a real low point for us. So I will always remember that Miami game for restoring my love of college football.
2006 was pretty decent but it is hard for me to call any game with Reggie Ball a classic. Reggie was terrible for most of the game but managed to throw one of the best deep balls I have ever seen. I still don’t know how James Johnson got the foot down, but it sure was pretty.
I’ll also never forget leaving work to go watch the game. Listened to Miami kickoff off to us, stopped for gas, got back in the car, and we were already down 7-0. I am still surprised we came back and won.
Rivalry ratings
One part tradition, one part win/loss record.
Proximity is a factor but shouldn’t be a prominent one. There are a lot of great inter-sectional rivalries that aren’t rooted in geography. Similar schools that aren’t close to one another have also proven to be some great rivalries over the years … USC-Notre Dame, BC-Notre Dame, Navy-Notre Dame, Army-Navy, Army-Air Force.
Perhaps a better factor name for “proximity” is “similarity.”
BC Interruption, SBN's Boston College Eagles blog
Who I'd like to see more of
Instead of playing Miss St (which I like mind you) and Vandy, I’d much rather see us playing ND and Auburn every other year. Maybe look to start a new one with a team from the Big Ten.
"You could spend the next fifteen seconds of your life watching a man and a tiger scream together, or you could be an idiot."
Fact.
by Jesse28 on Apr 16, 2010 7:59 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
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