It’s crazy to think that a D-1 FBS college football team can get manhandled in more than 30, 50, and sometimes 70 games and still come back for more beatdowns. That’s what’s going on with these lopsided college football rivalries. Squads getting squashed on a regular basis — sometimes for decades on end — and then automatically penciling in the matchup for next season.
Though, there’s one redeeming aspect to that sadomasochistic approach to the schedule and it comes from JFK of all peeps.
On September 12th, 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University’s football stadium that addressed America’s mission to go to the moon and included a reference to the Rice Owls and their lopsided “rivalry” with the Texas Longhorns. Here’s the excerpt:
“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the Moon! …We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win…”
Here’s the full speech:
That same year, Rice tied Texas. The Longhorns-Owls rivalry just missed the cut on this list as UT-Austin has won a little more than 77% of games against Rice. The Burnt Orange have won the last 13 matchups from 1995-2015. Before Rice’s narrow victory in 1994, they last won by three points in 1965.
Currently, the Florida Gators have won 29 consecutive games against the Kentucky Wildcats, which is the longest streak in SEC history. This, too, just barely missed the top 10.
Penn State — in addition to owning Temple — has dominated Maryland, winning almost 94% of the time, and West Virginia, whom they’ve beaten 83% of the time.
Big shoutout to Winsipedia and Wikipedia for the big-time assists in producing this video.