I live in Richmond, VA and am a die-hard BYU fan. We recently got BYUTv at the house, so I have been going through the old highlight games with my 11 year old son, sharing my experiences with games I could remember. As we rummaged through, I noticed that a lot (A LOT) of the BYU/Utah games were very close. More than I remembered. That got me thinking about rivalries in college football. I know the ‘Holy War’ is tossed around when talking about ‘top’ rivalries, but specifically, how does the BYU/Utah game rank among the rivalries in college football?

I started fumbling around online and found a poll on ESPN that asked readers to rank College Football's ‘biggest’ rivalry (it didn’t define what ‘biggest’ mean). There were 14 teams to choose from. Since BYU/Utah was listed, and the only way to see the results was to participate, I did. The names on the list were not necessarily new to me, but I have to admit that I was surprised when the results returned and showed that out of 26,000 votes, BYU/Utah was DEAD LAST.

DEAD LAST!

Granted, it was a fan poll, but even on the media sites I visited, commentators still had them 9 or higher (that’s the lowest I found, most people had them in the teens, just like the poll). That got me thinking…what does it really mean to be a rivalry? Is it possible to rank a rivalry without emotion and, if so, what makes a good rivalry? In answering my own question, I decided that a) it's impossible to figure out the answer to that question and b) I was going to try:-)

Before I go any further, what follows is one man’s thoughts and opinions. I don’t claim to be a statistician. I just tried to take a step back, get my heart and emotion out of the equation, and see how BYU/Utah statistically compared to other rivalries. Ultimately, I didn’t want to know who the ‘biggest’ rivalry is, but who the most ‘exciting’ rivalry is.

The first thing I asked myself was "If I don't have a vested interest in a particular rivarly, but I love football, what things would I want to see in a rivalry game. What aspects of the annual matchup would make me interested in watching it, make it exciting?"

Close games? Overtime games? A back and forth of wins, instead of one team winning ALL the time? Both teams from the same state, or close in proximity?

I’m sure there are more, but that’s where I started. The next step was to collect stats.

Because I have to actually work some during the week, I only did stats for the last 20 years. To me, teams could have had rivalry's back in the day, but that doesn't necessarily make the games exciting for the average fan today. So when I started pulling together the stats for all 14 teams* (thank you Wikipedia), some of the things started to stand out. *(Note: The Harvard/Yale game was not included in the stats because I couldn’t find them already formatted)

When compiling the stats, I chose the 6 statistics below as a basis for determining how exciting (i.e. better) a rivalry really has been over the last 20 years:

- How many games was the final score differential within a touchdown or less?(PD7orless) – to me, what makes for an exciting game is going down to the wire, both teams able to win with just minutes left on the clock. Out of the last 20 games in each of the rivalries, how many finished with a difference of 7 points or less? The more games in this category, the more exciting the rivalry.

- What is the average point differential for all games?(PDavg) – Not all games are going to be close, but over 20 games, what was the average point differential for the rivalry. The lower the average, the more exciting the rivalry.

- How close together are each team’s win percentage? (Win%Dif) – this was a tricky one, but I think it’s important. In a perfect world, a rivalry would have equal number of wins for both teams (i.e. 50%), or as close to that number as possible. So if each team had 50% in this column, then the number would be 0. The lower the number, the more exciting the rivalry.

- What is the average number of longest win streaks per team? (StreakAvg) – Okay, another tricky one, and I might be stretching on this one, but I was very surprised compiling the stats at how long some of the win streaks were. In some instances, one team would win for 5 or 6 years in a row, and then the other team would do the same. To me, that’s not very exciting. So this stat takes the longest win streak of team 1 and team 2 and averages the number. The lower the number, the more exciting the rivalry.

- How many games were a blowout (i.e. winning team won by 21 points or more)? (#BL) – Blowouts are what any fan of a rivalry wants for their home team. But what about the average fan interested in a rivalry? What makes the game exciting or pushes the rivalry forward? To me it is not blowouts. The lower this number, the more exciting the rivalry.

- How many games went into overtime? (#OT) – What is more exciting for fans than two teams that loath each other going into overtime!? The higher the number, the more exciting the rivalry.

- Tie-Breaker: Rivalries that are in-state. There isn’t necessarily a stat to glean from this, but as a fan, I am more apt to watch an in-state rivalry game, then another rivalry where the schools are 2,000 miles apart (hello Notre Dame and USC).

There it is, for better or worse. I fully confess my own understanding of the game and biases when determining what makes a game more ‘exciting’. I’m sure there are stats that I missed that are important, please let me know any you think of. The chart below shows the following:

• The average number for all rivalries for each of the categories listed
• The number for each individual rivalry for the categories listed
• Whether a rivalry was plus or minus the average number for each category
• Whether a rivalry is more or less exciting because of their score in each category (pink is negative, green is positive, bold border is best)

Here you go! Remember, the stats are only for the last 20 games (use the key at the bottom of the picture to decipher):

How about that...of the 6 statistical categories used, BYU/Utah leads the other rivalries in 4 of them and is the ONLY rivalry to have a positive stat in each of the categories! The two statistics that (I personally) consider most exciting is the wide margin of difference in the PD7orless and PDAvg category. In these two categories, BYU/Utah is not just above the average, they statistically whooped the other rivalries. Most exciting for me is that 75% of the BYU/Utah games were determined by a touchdown or less. That’s an amazing statistic! The next closest rivalry is 45%.

Ultimately, I would love to add a number scale and give each rivalry a final number, but I ain’t that numbery (if anybody wants to try, I would love to see it)!

So, I will argue that over the last 20 years, BYU/Utah has not only one of the most exciting rivalry’s in college football, they have the most exciting rivalry in college football:-)

GOOOOOOO fighting Cougars!