School traditions, rivalries beneficial to college experience
School rivalries serve no practical purpose.
Sure, it makes schools compete with each other, but competing with one other school (typically athletically) doesn’t really do anything to make a school an all-around better place. What benefit do we get from hating South Dakota State University? Some might argue that the only purpose of the rivalry is to give us an irrational hatred of jackrabbits. I disagree. School rivalries serve to bring a school together, and provide for some good fun.
To explain this, I want to begin by looking at a different school. I spent my first year of college at SDSMT. Just as SDSU is our rival, the Hardrockers face off against the Yellow Jackets from BHSU. This has led to the oldest Division II school rivalry in the country, which ultimately resulted in a game being broadcast on ESPN. That was a really fun thing to partake in, but here’s the thing: Mines and BH don’t even compete for the same students.
Mines is a hyper-competitive STEM school, and BH is primarily focused on education and business. While USD and SDSU obviously have differences in their educational focuses, we are so much closer to each other academically than the West River schools. What is the common thread? It’s really fun to talk crap about a mutual enemy. No game gets a school excited like playing the rival team.
It can bring an entire school together for one night of cheering and celebration or mourning if things don’t go as well. It got me to go to a volleyball game, and I hate volleyball. We do all kinds of things to try and promote school spirit, from “Wear Red Fridays” to giving out t-shirts to whatever crazy thing a group just thought of for this week. Isn’t it ironic that nothing makes us more aggressively proud to be Coyotes than the specter of the threatening Jackrabbits?
A rival school also provides a universal punching bag. One of my best friends from high school is now a Jackrabbit in their music program. Whenever I see him, I give him crap about going to a school for farmers.
It can even go further than this into being a general thing to hate. Anything and everything that can or does go wrong on campus could be blamed on SDSU, and hardly anyone would bat an eyelash. Indeed, I’m of the opinion that a great deal of people would even nod their heads in agreement.
School rivalries, like most traditions, are fundamentally silly. That doesn’t mean they’re pointless. We all know we are paying an obscene amount of money to be here, so why not have a way to feel good about our decisions as consumers?
Despite my deep and burning hatred of SDSU, I must admit they have a purpose. They serve to make me feel better just upon the mentioning of their name to be a Coyote.
If a school rivalry can make everyone feel better about their decisions in forming their careers and adult lives, then I would argue that they serve not only as benefits to the college experience, but as essentials to a proper one.
