@Dooley I'm with you in terms of rivals. In the Big East it was definitely Rutgers. It's nobody now.
It should be Rutgers/BC, with Pitt, Cuse, West Virginia falling in right behind them.
Agreed. Tough to establish rivalries when all of our local equivalent schools/programs leave our conference. (I don't blame them - we will eventually leave the AAC too) We obviously don't have the history as other programs, but RU/UConn games were always tight. For whatever reason, our fanbase didn't travel well down there but theirs always travelled well up here. I don't know if that is any indication of how they truly felt about our games or not, but the games themselves were, more than often, close.
The top 3 P5 conferences are so successful because their rivalries are very regionalized. In some cases, there are heated rivalries located in the
same state. None of this "we want to defend 'our perceived turf'" baloney. Sure, the ACC and B12 have their rivalries but not as many as they should. That may or may not improve over time, but it seems like our top football rivals
should be (based solely on equivalent level AD and region):
Rutgers
Syracuse
Pitt
BC
But alas, until we get our B1G/ACC invite in the next few years, we are forced to invent silly rivalries with Florida commuter schools so that we can pluck a few FL kids every other year.