Cody: Rivalry? What rivalry?

In the week leading up to last Saturday's game between No. 1 Grand Valley and No. 16 Saginaw Valley, the GVSU campus was lit up with talks discussing how the football team would fare when matched against their rival.

After grabbing a two-touchdown lead just a few minutes into the long-awaited game and thrashing SVSU by a final margin of 38-7, the Lakers proved a point.

They have no rivals -- at least not in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. To think otherwise is just ignorant.

If you do a search on Dictionary.com for the word rivalry, there is a word that stands out in the definition: competition.

GVSU has no competition in the GLIAC. They have posted a 75-3 record in their last 78 GLIAC games, and have won 45 straight regular season games dating back to 2004.

Saturday's game posted an official attendance of 16,647 people, far above previous records for GVSU and a new record for the GLIAC.

The attendance figures had a lot to do with hype. Students were lined up six or more deep in standing room only on the south side of the field. They expected to see a hard-fought game.

Instead, they saw a massacre.

Let's think twice before we say GVSU has rivals, shall we?

2 comments:

September 15, 2009 at 9:14 AM Unknown said...

Football is only one sport in which we compete. I have no problem calling SVSU a rival as in the other sports its more of a competition. IIRC, SVSU was the last team to beat us at home in the regular season (2003), so I still think it can be a rivalry. Although right now it looks one sided, eventually it will turn to the other side.

September 15, 2009 at 10:11 AM Cody Eding said...

You are correct, Ben. However, later that season the Lakers avenged the loss by beating Saginaw in the playoffs. GVSU also lost to SVSU on the road a year later in Martin's first year as coach. A week after that loss they dropped a game to Northwood and haven't lost in the regular season since.

In the case of my original post, I was referring to football. SVSU has been a more than adequate opponent in many other things, especially in the Battle of the Valleys fundraiser, which I see GVSU lost again.

We're better off calling Minnesota-Duluth or Northwest Missouri rivals in football, solely because they are the last two teams to assert they were actually better than the Lakers. Although I'm not so sure UMD was -- GVSU just played terribly.

Post a Comment