What Is A Rivalry?

If you are a sports fan then you know what a rivalry is, or do you?  Most people in Arizona would say the Arizona Cardinals and the San Fransisco 49ers are rivals.  Well Head coach Bruce Arians disagrees with them.  He says they are not rivals because the 49ers are dominating the series as of late, winning 9 of the last 10 meetings.    This made me wander.  What is a rivalry?

When you think rivalry many teams come to mind both locally and nationally.  Chandler vs. Hamilton, ASU vs. U of A, and Redskins vs. Cowboys are just a few and many more can be named.  But what makes these teams rivals?  Some are geographical, more so in high school and college.  Some are because teams are in the same division and play each other so often.  But when you get to the pros Arians is right.  You can't have a rivalry if one team is dominating the other.  This is why games such as the Steelers and the Browns don't mean as much as they once did.

So the reality is nowadays, in the pros, rivalry's don't exist.  We may think they do but they don't and one of the reasons is the players.  Using the NFL, for example, players don't typically stay on the same team.  It's hard for a player to really put himself into a rivalry when he used to play for that team or with some of its players.  Not having rivalries is damaging the NFL.  If every team played the same team in there division every year on the last game it would start rivalries because they will more likely have playoffs on the line.  So please bring back the rivalries.