Who is our biggest rival?

[Sycamorefan96]

Kind of curious as to what the responses will be. I picked 5 schools that I sort of view as rivals with a 6th option of "other" if someone feels I left someone out (please mention in the comments).

I chose Evansville. We haven't been good enough in football to have a real rival. Hopefully the EIU game can continue as I think that is an excellent opportunity. I think those two schools are also the most likely to consider us a rival. Illinois State is kind of a rivalry because we're both ISU. I'm probably too young to consider Ball State a rival but I know a lot of older fans consider them one. Then the past decade us and SIU have been pretty even in football and basketball and have sort of built a small rivalry. I'd guess that SIU and ILSU consider each other their biggest rivals and I have no idea about Ball State. I left Butler off the list. They think they are too good for us at this point and I think that so called rivalry is pretty much dead at this point. Then with Valpo they haven't been in the MVC long enough yet in my opinion to consider them a rival (especially biggest).

 

[IndyTreeFan]

I chose Ball State, simply because they are really Indiana State - Eastern Division. We've always had some good "rivalry" with each other, even though they dropped us in football in the late 80's. I get a real kick out of asking Ball State students and alumni to get me a picture of the Liberty Bell trophy when they're on campus over there...

We have no rival like Illinois State has in Bradley. They HATE each other. They will do ANYTHING to beat each other. It's hilarious. I lived over there for several years - it's intense. The War on 74.

We really need to be good in basketball and football for more than a year at a time to develop any real rivalries. Hopefully we can do that over the next 10 years or so...

 

[SycamoreBlue3209]

I would say Ball St, but not being on the same level in football hurts the rivalry.

We compete for a lot of the same kids both in basketball recruiting and for general students, so beating them feels as good as any win outside of taking down one of the big boys.

 

[Jason Svoboda]

The administration.

 

[bent20]

Eastern was a real rivalry in football, but I think ending the series for a while hurt that. I agree that we really don't win enough to have any true rivals.

 

[bent20]

The administration.

They're more like an adversary.

 

[niklz62]

The administration.

beat me to it

 

[Jason Svoboda]

They're more like an adversary.

I think they can be both.

 

[sycamorebacker]

When I was in school, I think everyone wanted the right color of ticket to be able to go the the UE game.

Interesting, then we were D2 rivals.

 

[ISUCC]

The administration.

man, this is awesome, but so true, lol

As for basketball, I'm going with Missouri-St Louis and Rose Hulman since we play them fairly often.

If we played Ball State in football every year I'd say them, but since we don't I'll go with Eastern Illinois.

 

[swsycamore]

Evansville

 

[SycamoreStateofMind]

Depends on the sport...

But none of the rivalries run real deep...

 

[WOZ]

It used to be Ball State,
Now? Absolutely no one!
A rivalry exists only when two schools hate each other etc. Ball State stopped hating us decades ago when we became basically irrelevant because our football and basketball records were putrid.

 

[sycamore tuff]

We beat ourselves as often or more than we win so I would say we are our biggest rival. Sometimes it is another ISU sport playing at the same time.