top sports rivalries of all time

UCLA Bruins vs Arizona Wildcats
 1. The only West Coast team to become a national figure after John Wooden s dynasty of the 1960s and 1970s has been Lute Olsen s Wildcats. On his watch, Arizona has won a national title and reached the Final Four four times, not to mention claiming four Pac-10 tourney championships and 11 regular season titles and produced some impressive NBA talent. Olson s mini-dynasty isn t nearly as impressive as what Wooden achieved, but it s worth mention .....
Detroit Red Wings vs Colorado Avalanche
 2. Obviously it all started in the 1996 Western Conference Finals, with that Claude Lemieux-Kris Draper mishap in Joe Louis Arena. But over the next seven years, they would face each other in the playoffs five times and three of those meetings would be for the Western Conference title. Only the 2002 edition went the full seven games, but that No. 1 seed vs. No. 2 seed series was one of the greatest in recent history, with three games going to overti .....
Oregon Ducks vs Oregon State Beavers
 3. Until recently for Oregon, neither two of these teams haven t perennial powerhouses for a long time neither has won a national championship and, for the most part, have been overshadowed by USC. But how could we not include a rivalry known as The Civil War? They have played 118 games, with a pretty narrow margin separating them The Ducks lead 62-46 and 10 games resulting in ties. There have been plenty of narrow games in this rivalry and fans up .....
Indiana Pacers vs New York Knicks
 4. Besides dealing with Michael Jordan s Bulls, the 1990 s New York Knicks had another Midwest roadblock to hurdle every NBA postseason Reggie Miller s Pacers. Miller famously torched the Knicks in Game 5 of the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals, scoring 25 points in the fourth quarter of a comeback win at Madison Square Garden. A year later, he scored a ridiculous eight points in 8.9 seconds as the Pacers again shocked the Knicks on their home cour .....
Grambling State Tigers vs Southern Jaguars
 5. SWAC schools don t often get to play at the Superdome or have a game broadcast on network television, but the annual showdown between Southern and Grambling gets special treatment, partly because it s been so tight 20 wins for Grambling and 21 for Southern. College football legend Eddie Robinson and Super Bowl MVP Doug Williams also helped infuse extra-special intrigue in the Bayou Classic. Williams final game as the Tigers head coach was the .....
Clemson Tigers vs South Carolina Gamecocks
 6. In today s college football landscape, there are very few out-of-conference rivalry games, at least on a high level such as this one. The Battle for the Palmetto State is the best, however, largely because neither one has a true rival inside their respective conferences. They ve battled 112 times since 1896 and had some classic showdowns along the way, including Clemson s last-minute win in 1977 and Steve Spurrier s upset of the 15th-ranked T .....
Pittsburgh Panthers vs West Virginia Mountaineers
 7. I know this one is done.. but I though I should still mention it. The Backyard Brawl was one of the most overlooked rivalries in all of college sports, if not sports in general. Pitt and West Virginia had been back-and-forth for decades, with the Mountaineers dominating throughout the late 1950s and 1960s before the Panthers owned the 1970s. The last 16 have been a virtual split, with both teams routinely contending for the Big East title most se .....
New York Knicks vs Miami Heat
 8. This is one of the fiercest and heated rivalries in NBA history, and it didn t even reach the Eastern Conference Finals. These two teams were easily two of the most physical and brutal in the NBA. When they played against each other you knew it was going to be a slugfest, to put it nicely. The funny thing is that it may have all been started by a move from Pat Riley. In 1995, Riley stepped down as the Knicks coach after failing to make it back t .....
Wisconsin Badgers vs Minnesota Golden Gophers
 9. The Battle for the Paul Bunyan Axe is now the most oft-played rivalry in all of college football. And fittingly, the record for those 124 showdowns is very close 59 wins for the Golden Gophers, 57 wins for the Badgers and eight ties. And although Wisconsin has owned the rivalry for the past two decades, losing just twice since 1994, plenty of the games have been tight. Take the 2005 edition, for example. The 5-1 Gophers, hosting the 5-1 Badgers, .....
Denver Broncos vs Cleveland Browns
 10. In the grand scheme of more than 80 years of NFL history, the Browns and Broncos aren t a great rivalry. Still, during a four-year period in the late 1980 s, there wasn t a more important rivalry in the NFL. A year after losing the AFC title game at home via The Drive, the Browns traveled to Denver, where they blew a second straight opportunity to reach the Super Bowl via The Fumble. The Browns gained a small measure of revenge two years later .....
Chicago Bulls vs New York Knicks
 11. The Knicks were always considered a team that drew the shortest straw in the Michael Jordan era of basketball. They just didn t know how to get past him, just like many other teams in the NBA during the 90 s but the Knicks were the extreme example. They were an extremely talented team with John Starks and Patrick Ewing at the helm, but they were never enough to handle the dynamic duo that was Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. In 1989, a sixth- .....
India vs Pakistan
 12. Cricket can be a hotly contested sport and has seen many fierce rivalries develop between nations. In the case of India and Pakistan, this cricket rivalry stands apart as it has been fuelled by politics and war. The religious division of India in 1947 and subsequent fighting over Kashmir has long stoked the fires of this sports rivalry. Wars and terrorist acts have caused matches to be cancelled on several occasions, and these meetings have often .....
New Yorks Knicks vs Baltimore Washington Bullets
 14. The Knicks of the late 1960s and early 1970s occupy a special place in NBA history despite their laugh-ability in todays NBA. They won a pair of NBA Finals and dropped a third to the historically great LA Lakers in 1972. Fans of the old Baltimore Bullets have to look at that run with a tremendous feeling of what if? While the Knicks had the likes of legends such as Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe, Jerry Lucas, Dave DeBusschere, Bill Bradley and Willis .....
Florida Gators vs Georgia Bulldogs
 15. The World s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party has one of the best names for a rivalry game. And since it features two annual SEC powerhouses on a neutral field, it s also one of the best contests of the college football season. Both teams have rivals elsewhere Georgia has Alabama and Georgia Tech, while the Gators have Miami, Florida State and now Alabama. But this rivalry has the most tradition and the most at stake each year. And since records n .....
Kentucky Wildcats vs Louisville Cardinals
 16. Despite being so close, the two premier programs in the Bluegrass State didn t play one another from 1959 to 1983. But after a thriller in Knoxville in the Elite Eight, the rivalry resumed with an annual game. The series has been fairly close since then 22 wins for the Wildcats and 12 for the Cardinals. But when Louisville locked up Rick Pitino in 2001, just four years after he left Lexington with his rebuilding project completed, it added a new .....
Boston Celtics vs Philadelphia 76ers
 17. The rivalry between the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers got started when the Syracuse Nationals left upstate New York in 1964 and moved to Philadelphia and became the 76ers. The rivalry began with a bang in the 1965 playoffs when the two teams met in the Eastern Conference Finals. The two teams battled for seven games, and the Celtics had a 110-109 lead in the seventh game but turned the ball over in the final seconds. However, when the .....
Cleveland Browns vs Cincinnati Bengals
 18. The Browns-Bengals rivalry was a heated one long before a single game was played between the two. Paul Brown, the man who turned Cleveland into a dynasty, had been pushed out of town by owner Art Modell in 1963 and finally returned to the NFL five years later as owner and head coach of the expansion Bengals. Sharing the same state and separated by just a few hundred miles, these teams two annual showdowns are a Battle for Ohio. Now, neither tea .....
Liverpool vs Manchester United
 19. Take two teams from England s industrial North-West, make them two of England s most successful footballing sides and what do you get? Probably one of the biggest rivalries in English football. Liverpool and Manchester United are two of England s biggest clubs and have dominated for stretches over the past 40 years. With the appointment of Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United made it a mission to knock Liverpool off their perch, and domestical .....
New England Patriots vs New York Jets
 20. The Jets-Pats rivalry has been a huge story for the past few seasons with Spygate, the Mangini-Belichick feud, Rex Ryan, Antonio Cromartie, Wes Welker, among other things. Not to mention constantly terribly overhyped games in the past half decade. But the bad blood really started to boil in the mid-1990 s when Bill Parcells left the Patriots to take over the Jets followed by Bill Belichick doing the same switcheroo (in reverse) four years later. .....
Cincinnati Reds vs Pittsburgh Pirates
 21. Only two National League franchises won the World Series during the 1970 s the Pirates and the Reds. And since they often had to go through one another to get there, they were one of the greatest rivalries in modern history. The Western Division-winning Reds swept the Eastern Division-winning Pirates to win the pennant in 1970 and 1975 and also knocked them out of the NLCS in 1972. Not to be outdone, Willie Stargell and the We Are Fam-a-lee Pira .....
Harvard Crimson vs Yale Bulldogs
 22. When a rivalry is known simply as The Game, it has to be special. They may be two of the most prestigious universities in the world academically, but they play great football as well .....
Dallas Cowboys vs San Francisco 49ers
 23. Dallas and San Francisco played several classics in the 1970 s and 1980 s consecutive NFC Championship meetings in 1970 and 1971, the Cowboys playoff comeback win in 1972 and The Catch a decade later come to mind. But it wasn t until the early 1990 s that the rivalry became truly historic. Three consecutive NFC title games from 1992-1994 pitted Dallas against San Francisco. Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin and Jimmy Johnson topped NFL .....
New York Yankees vs Kansas City Royals
 24. The Yankees returned to glory in the mid-to-late 1970 s largely at the expense of the Kansas City Royals. A solo home run by Chris Chambliss in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 6 of the 1976 ALCS sent the Yankees back to the World Series for the first time in over a decade. The Yankees took the next two pennants as well, defeating the Royals in the 1977 and 1978 ALCS. Kansas City fans finally saw their club get over the hump two years late .....
UCLA Bruins vs USC Trojans
 25. The 1967 edition of this battle for LA was the most famous Heisman Trophy winner Gary Beban came up one point short against the next season s Heisman winner, USC s O.J. Simpson. But because more than a dozen Rose Bowl berths have been decided by the annual USC-UCLA showdown, it remains one of the most storied rivalries in football history. And since every year there are a handful of first-round picks in the NFL draft on both sides of the field, .....
Detroit Pistons vs Chicago Bulls
 26. The Detroit Pistons and the Chicago Bulls had a rivalry for Eastern Conference superiority in the late 1980s and early 1990s and it was a truly epic one for multiple accounts. In the early years of the rivalry, the Bad Boys from Detroit had their way with the imposition of the Jordan Rules. Those rules were Detroit s philosophy designed by head coach Chuck Daly to make the other Bulls besides Michael Jordan take the most important shots of the g .....
Stanford Cardinal vs California Bears
 27. No national championships have been decided by the outcome of this one and only once have Rose Bowl implications hinged on the outcome. But because the game is so intense, both on the field and in the stands, it is one of the most heated rivalries in all of sports. The Stanford Band mishap in 1982 was clearly the most memorable and thrilling game in the series history (Don t forget John Elway leading the Cardinal to a go-ahead field goal in th .....
Argentina vs Brazil
 28. Another footballing rivalry, but on an international scale. Argentina and Brazil are two of the powers of world football with some of the most talented players in the sport. If Brazil had Pele, Argentina had Diego Maradona. Today, Argentina has Lionel Messi while Brazil boasts Neymar. Statistically, there isn t much dividing these two sides. Head-to-head, each has won 36 games with the only real difference being four more goals scored by Argenti .....
Australia vs New Zealand
 29. The rivalry between Australia and New Zealand is found everywhere, whether politics, entertainment or sport. On the field however, one aspect where the rivalry is fiercest is rugby. Head-to-head, the two have played nearly 140 league matches with Australia claiming a convincing 93 wins. In terms of union matches, there have been over 150 with 104 won by New Zealand. The two nations may be neighbors and partners but you wouldn t know it from the .....
New York Yankees vs Brooklyn Dodgers
 30. The cross-country rivalry between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers has had plenty of great moments. They battled in 1963, 1977, 1978 and 1981. But that rivalry paled in comparison to the Dodgers-Yankees, version 1.0. They shared the same city for decades so that helped make their first World Series in 1941 exciting. But the great games that followed is why they are ranked so high on this list. From 1947-1956 they met an incredible six .....
Indiana Hoosiers vs Purdue Boilermakers
 31. In the 1980s and 1990s, the state of Indiana had two of the nation s best basketball programs no wonder the movie Hoosiers was released in 1986. In Bloomington, Bobby Knight was the king and would win two national championships and seven Big Ten titles during those two decades. A hundred miles north, in West Lafayette, Gene Keady put together a great program of his own, winning six regular season Big Ten championships during the 80 s and 90 s. .....
Australia vs England
 32. Over 130 years ago, the Australian and English cricket teams met at the Kennington Oval. Australia shocked the British and took home victory. A mock obituary written in a British paper said the English body was to be burned and the ashes taken to Australia. This began the Ashes, a rivalry between England and Australia which continues to this day. Since 1882, well over 300 Ashes matches have been contested with Australia winning 128 and England 10 .....
Miami Hurricanes vs Florida State Seminoles
 33. It s not as old as many of the other great rivalries in college football, but in the last quarter-century, the Seminoles and Hurricanes have fielded some of the greatest teams in the game s history. And since both programs are now in the ACC and one of these days could meet in the conference title game, it has a great future. The 1980s and 1990s showdowns were great, with all of the nail-biting finishes and Heisman Trophy winners. But the 2000 .....
USC Trojans vs Notre Dame Fighting Irish
 34. The battle for the Jeweled Shillelagh has featured a handful of absolute thrillers, whether they were in South Bend or Southern California. The 1968 tie that featured Heisman Trophy winner O.J. Simpson and Irish legend Terry Hanratty was a great one, as was the 1978 edition in which the Trojans came back to beat Joe Montana in his last game against USC. But the infamous Bush push in 2005 was the best. A back-and-forth affair that hinged on a stri .....
Pittsburgh Steelers vs Baltimore Ravens
 35. Only in an extremely rare case would a rivalry less than 20 years old make it this high. But the Steelers-Ravens are an exception. They play in the same division, so they meet twice a year, but because they often have two of the best defenses in the NFL (six of the last 14 Defensive Player of the Year Awards have went to Steelers or Ravens), so it s obviously a special, extremely hard-hitting affair. Now, they ve met in the playoffs four times .....
Chicago Cubs vs St Louis Cardinals
 36. The Cubs vs. Cards rivalry is one of the best in all of sports. But because there hasn t been a single postseason contest between the two and they only have a few one-two finishes in their 100-plus years of battling, we can t declare it one of the top three baseball rivalries of all time. How often has the pennant hinged on a late-season Cubs-Cardinals showdown? Not very often. But in early September 2003, St. Louis held a one-game lead over th .....
Army vs Navy
 37. Certainly, this is the most poignant rivalry in all of sports. Presidents routinely attend and the patriotism on display is unequaled. But the game has lost some of its importance in the college football world since the 1960s neither team is a national championship contender. Still, the series is extremely close, with Navy holding a slight edge, 59-49-7. One of those Navy victories came in 1963, when Heisman Trophy winner Roger Staubach led the 8 .....
Washington Redskins vs Dallas Cowboys
 38. The team of America s capital versus America s team. This rivalry began even before the Dallas Cowboys franchise existed. Clint Murchison Jr. was a Texas oil tycoon who wanted his own NFL team in the 1950s. Murchison tried buying the Washington Redskins from George Preston Marshall but the deal fell through. He then pushed for the creation of an expansion team which was blocked by Marshall until the Redskins owner found out Murchison owned the .....
Oklahoma Sooners vs Nebraska Cornhuskers
 39. The Big Eight turning into the Big XII in 1996 slowly watered down one of college s best rivalries. And Nebraska heading to the Big Ten in 2011 was effectively the death knell. Still, for decades, the annual Sooners-Huskers game was often an audition for the national championship. The Sooners owned Nebraska throughout the 1950s, just like they owned virtually every other team in the nation. But Nebraska began to catch up in the late 1960s. The f .....
Oklahoma Sooners vs Texas Longhorns
 40. As great as the Nebraska-Oklahoma rivalry was for many decades, the Red River Shootout is better barely. And not just because it is still alive and well today but almost every year, both teams are ranked and lately both programs are also national championship contenders when they meet in early October(usually). The Sooners and Longhorns have played each other nine times with both teams ranked in the Top Five or better, matching the OU-Nebraska ri .....
United States vs Soviet Union
 41. The Cold War brought a level of excitement and patriotism to this rivalry unlike any other in sports history. The games themselves were important, but the victory was what mattered more there was a we are a superior country now feeling when either team defeated the other in hockey, weightlifting, basketball and all the other important games. Certainly, the 1980 Winter Olympics with the Do you believe in miracles? moment is the most exciting and i .....
Los Angeles Brooklyn Dodgers vs New York San Francisco Giants
 42. A rivalry spawned in New York transferred to the West Coast in 1958. It reached its most famous moment in 1951, when Bobby Thomson s home run beat the Dodgers to win the pennant. When the clubs fought for National League pennants in the 60s, they were also constantly fighting on the field, including the infamous episode when Juan Marichal attacked Johnny Roseboro with a bat. Giants fans loved it when Joe Morgan s homer knocked the Dodgers out .....
Toronto Maple Leafs vs Montreal Canadiens
 43. The Canadiens-Maple Leafs rivalry is the oldest and most storied in the NHL. Before the advent of separate conferences, they played in the Stanley Cup Finals five times, with the Maple Leafs taking three Cups at the Canadiens expense. They also claimed a third straight Cup in 1964, thanks in part to a thrilling win over Montreal in the semifinals in seven games. For a stretch, from 1956-1969, the cup was housed in either Toronto or Montreal eve .....
Duke Blue Devils vs North Carolina Tar Heels
 44. College basketball s greatest rivalry. Being seven miles apart helps, but so does the image of Dean Smith or Roy Williams on one sideline and Mike Krzyzewski on the other. Throughout the last quarter-century, the ACC championship and a Final Four berth has so often been awarded to one of these teams. That gives their annual home-and-home battles an electricity that is unmatched at any other time in the college basketball regular season. There ar .....
Green Bay Packers vs Chicago Bears
 45. The oldest and longest-running rivalry in the NFL is also one of the most even. The Bears and Packers have fought some of the hardest, most physical games in the NFL. But the individual match ups also help separate this rivalry from all the others. Who was the better middle linebacker Dick Butkus or Ray Nitschke? Who was the better head coach George Halas or Vince Lombardi? Which team was better The 1985 Bears or the 1960s Packers? Yet for all th .....
Alabama Crimson Tide vs Auburn Tigers
 46. The Iron Bowl is not the best rivalry in college football but it s a terribly close second. There was a long gap, from 1908-1947 where they did not meet, so only 79 games have been played Alabama leads the series 43-35-1. Nevertheless, the Tigers and Tide have played some of the most memorable college football games of all time. But what makes this SEC showdown so special is the fact that whenever one of the two teams is in contention for a nati .....
Real Madrid vs Barcelona
 47. In club football you don t get much bigger than this one. These two giants of Spanish football are two of the most popular teams in the world and, indeed, are two of the most dominant in football/soccer history. Traditionally, whenever Real Madrid and Barcelona met in the league, the match was titled El Clasico. Nowadays, that term is applied to almost any battle between these clubs. The politics of the 1930s and the Spanish Civil War amplified .....
Los Angeles Lakers vs Boston Celtics
 48. The Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers have met in the NBA Finals 12 times, and many of the battles have been all-time classics. No two teams have ever met more often to decide their league championship in any professional sport. In addition to Bill Russell and Larry Bird, the Celtics have featured stars like John Havlicek, Sam Jones, Bob Cousy, Dave Cowens, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. On the other side of t .....
Michigan vs Ohio State
 49. When Ohio Stadium opened in 1922, Michigan spoiled the party with a 22-0 victory. The rivalry was heated in the early days as both have been long-time college football powers. But it got even hotter in 1969, when Bo Schembechler took over as Michigan s coach and upset Woody Hayes No. 1-ranked, undefeated Buckeyes. Four times in the next six years, both teams were ranked in the top five when they met. In 1970 and 1973, both were undefeated (the .....
New York Yankees vs Boston Red Sox
 50. Is Red Sox-Yankees the best rivalry in baseball history? Yes. Is it the best rivalry in sports of all-time? I think so. But because the rivalry was so one-sided from the 1920s to the late 1970s (aside from a few seasons of Ted Williams late-1940s teams), it s got to be the number one choice on this list. Of course the Red Sox sin of selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees adds an element that no other rivalry can contend with. But on the diamond, the Y .....
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