Great Rivalries Cast The Usual Calculus Of Competition To The Wind

I live in Tallahassee and, admittedly, am a fan of the local university team, Florida State. But covering sports professionally for 30 years has made me cautious when it comes to talking trash or even prognosticating about my teams. This is especially true when the Seminoles play their great rival from the University of Florida, which took place last Friday in Tallahassee.

No, my hesitations and wariness came not from any fear of the Gators; through the years, both teams have been favored at one time or another. I feel the same nervous anticipation whether it is FSU or Florida that has been viewed as the favorite. When it comes to great rivalries, the baggage we carry about favorites and underdogs is like throwing straw in the wind. It’s likely to blow right back into your face! That’s what makes rivalries so exciting, and last weekend was no exception.

It’s a good thing that sports pundits don’t coach teams because if they did there would be no reason for Florida, who got spanked by lowly Vanderbilt the previous week, to have even made the trip up North to visit the country’s 16th-ranked Seminoles.

“This is gonna be fu-uun!” boasted my companions in the days leading up to the game. A sense of over-confidence among my friend group had me worried because if there’s one thing I know about competition with great rivals is that the games are seldom easy. FSU wound up winning that game—and it was a fun game, but not because FSU was able to administer a whupping to Florida. To the contrary, momentum shifted back and forth during all four quarters, with FSU emerging just a single touchdown better than Florida when the final whistle blew.

But further north, there was no joy in Columbus, Ohio as the mighty Buckeyes of Ohio State struck out dramatically to their historically despised rivals from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The score of 45-23 was deceptively close as Michigan humiliated the #2 ranked Buckeyes, sending them down to #5 and seriously undermining their chance of a run at a national championship. When asked whether his Michigan team could now boast having a leg up in the rivalry, Head Coach Jim Harbaugh offered the usual reply of focusing on one game at a time. But the two players sitting beside him in the presser could barely stifle a pair of smiles—as wide as Lake Michigan—that seemed to ask, “You don’t think we spent, like, every waking minute last week figuring out how to stop that great Ohio State quarterback?”

For spectators and participants, alike, great rivalries offer an important leadership lesson. If you’re the favorite and enjoying pole position in the media and your own mind, ignore it like grim death. Conversely, if you’re the underdog and constantly being reminded of all the reasons that this probably isn’t going to be your year because, well, gee, your rival is just too good, ignore it like grim death. Use the received but faulty wisdom to energize your efforts during preparation. Remember that great rivalries have a habit of messing up the calculus of competition in surprising and wonderful ways, raising underdogs to the status of superheroes and bringing down the mighty. Great rivalries are like stock picks: past performance does not predict future results. As we’ve written in this space before, the reason for this phenomenon is that great rivalries come to define the two rivals and make both of them better. If one of the rivals ceases to define himself by the rivalry and continually improve to come out on top, an imbalance occurs and one of the parties outgrows the other.

Then, the rivalry ceases to be.

Looking at rivalries in this way raises an important distinction between a proper rivalry and a hate-fest. True rivals often express the deepest kind of loathing for each other, if only because a rivalry is a game of status between two relative equals whose egos are on trial every time they meet. Good old-fashioned disdain can be a prime motivator for performance.

However, a simple hate-fest requires no particular commitment to improvement and is based on spite, resentment or envy—none of which typically lead to sustained efforts to achieve greatness. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal had a transcendent rivalry; Jimmy Connors and Ilie Năstase had an amusing, late-career, middle-finger popping hate-fest.

On any given Sunday (or Saturday or even Friday night), a weak rival can test or even beat a stronger rival through dogged preparation and invention born of necessity. So in these big games, resist the urge to predict the game and focus your energy on perfecting it.