BYU/Utah, the ill-named Holy War, is one of the most competitive rivalries, and this decade it may be the closest. But the reaction to Max Halls anti-everything U of U tirade makes me wonder if the rivalry isn't quite to where other rivalries are. Sure, BYU and Utah aren't your average schools, and I hope the religious aspect will be toned down a lot if not go away, as its essentially two majority LDS schools playing each other. Plus anytime you get religion involved in anything someone is bound to take it too far and do something crazy.

Hall,s statements were rough, but he also had some pointed comments at BYU fans. This was a senior who has been criticized his career pulling a Michael Jordan HOF speech and taking out anyone and everyone who'd doubted him while hes on top.

However, his reaction has drawn criticism from everyone, on both sides in the Beehive state. What they need to realize is that Football rivalries aren't civil, by there very nature they cant be, and that's not a bad thing. In fact, its probably therapeutic. In-state or cross state frustrations are manifest for 3-4 hours, played out in a relatively safe arena providing emotional release. The ability to project abstract personal angst, and release it at an annually given time and place to a specific non-personal group (a helmet clad football team), is healthier than leaving it bottled up, and then projecting it onto a person, usually a sexualized or racialized Other.

Take for instance the Border War game: Kansas and Missouri. The name isn't, like most rivalry "wars" hyperbole that was added after the fact. The war came first, then the football game. These are two states that fought each other, killed innocent civilians in each others states, burnt down cities, etc. Basically provided the kindling for the fire that was the Civil War. When football came in at the end of the 19th century, only about 30 years after the real wars, it was seen as a way to provide a sort of reconciliation.

While the political aspects and the war itself were around longer, it wasn't nearly as bloody as the aptly named Bleeding Kansas era, the Ohio St. v Michigan rivalry also finds its roots in pre-civil war fighting; the Toledo War, to be specific.

Another pre-football rivalry resulting from political and economic disputes is the Clemson/S.Carolina game. I mean hate is celebrated in the "Clean, Old-fashioned hate" game between Georgia Tech and Georgia.

As long as the game doesn't erupt into or cause physical violence outside of the controlled environment of the football field, I don't see anything wrong with it. In the end, schools need their rivals. Usually a rivalry is created when two competitive programs perceive what is lacking in their institution or program in another institution or program. By confronting their rival, they confront what is absent in their own psyche. What Max Hall was saying should be considered a compliment. He was saying that without Utah he wouldn't have a person or thing to project his own inadequacies onto, and either he,d never get around to facing them, or do so in an unhealthy manner.

Embrace rivalry football as a carnivalesque occurance that we take for granted. Certainly Bahktin would be fascinated by the pageantry surrounding the Oklahoma v. Texas game, or the Georgia v. Florida game. Rivalries allow for things which may not be normally acceptable, to be done or said, without being considered, in a larger framework outside of the sports arena and its extension into the public sphere of discourse around sports. They provide a bizarre conversation filled with nuance and ritual (in speech and action) that brings people together, and more importantly brings people to confront what they otherwise would not have.