I used to believe that the greatest thing about a rivalry is that it doesn’t matter how good your team is, or how good your rival is, you just know it’s going to be a good game.
You can be winless. Your starting quarterback can be injured. Vegas has you as a 20 point underdog. But headed into rivalry week, none of that matters. Coaches get more creative, players give that extra 1%, and fans become even more crazed. As Ty Hildenbrandt and Dan Rubenstein say on the Solid Verbal podcast, “throw the record books out”.
In a perverse way, the worse you are, and the better your rival is, makes the game even more exciting.