by Jason Sirovina | Sports Writer

One dedicated fan junior Garret Sifuentez loves going to College Station for the yell practice the night before the game. This gets the fans ready to go for the game the following day. This Texas A&M tradition is the energy for each game which is intensified depending on the opponent.

In every sport there is a rivalry that die hard fans and players get up for and play harder, despite that team’s record. The teams can try to save their seasons or play spoiler either way rivalry games are what teams live for.

“Rivalries start from key games and the team that wins talks a lot of trash about the other team and how they lost. Also a huge fight may break out between the teams where the benches clear,” junior Sahil Gopal said. “The fans get louder and louder too throughout the game because of the emotion”.

The scale of the rivalry depends on the sport for some fans. The sports with the top rivalries are football and basketball, but the fans are rampant regardless the sport.

“Basketball rivalries are the best in all of sports because of the big stages of the games and there is continuous tension throughout a basketball game,” Gopal said.

This is most relevant from the recent controversies in the latest NBA finals, where last second comeback by the Miami Heat over the San Antonio Spurs changed everything. This really helped fans express their opinions on these two teams because the Heat of in all the headlines.

“From now on the Spurs and Heat will be inseparable rivals since their intense finals matchup and the fans will look forward to the so called ‘rival’ games for years to come,” Gopal said.

Naturally, football is also very heated when it comes to rivalries. College football fans are arguably the most dedicated and are thus highly affected by the results of those key games. But it’s not always the oldest rivalries that are the most popular.

“Texas A&M and Alabama is becoming the biggest rivalry in sports because A&M was the first team to beat Alabama in a while and it was the Aggies first year in the SEC,” Sifuentez said. “That was last year and in this year’s game A&M was down 42-28 late in the game then Mike Evans scored a 95 yard touchdown and that got them back in.”