Unraveling Our Rivals

This week I’ll be on campus giving a guest lecture on the Little Brown Jug in John U. Bacon’s great course, ‘The History of College Athletics’. (Bacs is tied up on projects so this semester legendary U-M SID Bruce Madej is teaching the class).

Prep for that lecture led to thoughts about Minnesota’s place as a U-M rival and how that has evolved over time. Naturally my thoughts quickly went to our other rivals and how our relationships have developed (or died) over the decades. A pile or two of crumpled paper later and…Bob Zuppke’s your uncle:

Overview: I’ve attempted to represent the overall and relative strength of U-M’s rivalries over time. If you had a seizure reading this, cheers, you are…