BIFL - Historical Rivals

Last week was "Rivalry Week" over in the Uberleague, Will's shoddy imitation of BIFL featuring mostly washed-up DTDers of the class of '00 and '01. Will selected the rivalries mostly by pitting people who were close friends against each other (himself against Bernier, me against Bardey, Joe against Trey, etc.) We did something similar a few years back in BIFL, when Doit and I still lived together and could work into the wee hours of the night (for Bardey, 10pm) discussing possible permutations of the schedule, though ours was more geographically based. But during Week 1, as I was watching the Giants take on the Redskins, and the Bears face the Packers, and the Chargers against the Raiders, it occured to me that real rivalries emerge from shared histories. Those clubs have played each other dozens of times. They've met in the playoffs, with huge stakes on the line. They've alternated periods of dominance over each other, with their fans having to live through years of abuse at the hands of the winning team's supporters. History is what builds rivalries.

With that in mind, I decided to delve into the history of our match-ups here in BIFL. We've been at it five years now, and some legitimate rivalries should be emerging. But you might be surprised at what they are. The results of my research... after the jump.
(Oh shit Sovic figured out how to do the "after the jump" thing!)

The first (and longest) step here was compiling the records of each team against every other team. I don't recommend doing this to anyone with a job. Here goes:

Andre vs....
     Bardey (1-6)
     Billy (7-1)
     Chalski (5-3)
     Chuck (4-2)
     Dekker (4-3)
     Dick (4-1)
     Juse (5-2)
     Schank/Souts (2-6)
     Shoaf (3-4)
     Sovic (3-3)
     Spencer (4-6)


Bardey vs....
     Andre (6-1)
     Billy (1-5)
     Chalski (5-5)
     Chuck (6-2)
     Dekker (4-2)
     Dick (2-3)
     Juse (3-4)
     Schank/Souts (4-5)
     Shoaf (2-4)
     Sovic (3-4)
     Spencer (4-5)


Billy vs....
     Andre (1-7)
     Bardey (5-1)
     Chalski (4-4)
     Chuck (3-3)
     Dekker (2-5)
     Dick (3-7)
     Juse (5-5)
     Schank/Souts (4-3)
     Shoaf (1-6)
     Sovic (1-4)
     Spencer (4-3)


Chalski vs....
     Andre (3-5)
     Bardey (5-5)
     Billy (4-4)
     Chuck (6-2)
     Dekker (2-5)
     Dick (3-2)
     Juse (3-3)
     Schank/Souts (3-5)
     Shoaf (3-3)
     Sovic (2-5)
     Spencer (5-2-1)


Chuck vs....
     Andre (2-4)
     Bardey (2-6)
     Billy (3-3)
     Chalski (2-6)
     Dekker (4-6)
     Dick (5-6)
     Juse (4-3)
     Schank/Souts (3-2)
     Shoaf (5-2)
     Sovic (2-4)
     Spencer (3-4)


Dekker vs....
     Andre (3-4)
     Bardey (2-4)
     Billy (5-2)
     Chalski (5-2)
     Chuck (6-4)
     Dick (3-3)
     Juse (5-5)
     Schank/Souts (5-1)
     Shoaf (2-6)
     Sovic (3-5)
     Spencer (4-1)


Dick vs....
     Andre (1-4)
     Bardey (3-2)
     Billy (7-3)
     Chalski (2-3)
     Chuck (6-5)
     Dekker (3-3)
     Juse (4-3)
     Schank/Souts (4-4)
     Shoaf (5-4)
     Sovic (4-4)
     Spencer (1-3-1)


Juse vs....
     Andre (2-5)
     Bardey (4-3)
     Billy (5-5)
     Chalski (3-3)
     Chuck (3-4)
     Dekker (5-5)
     Dick (3-4)
     Schank/Souts (5-3)
     Shoaf (1-6)
     Sovic (3-3)
     Spencer (3-3)


Schank/Souts vs...
     Andre (6-2)
     Bardey (5-4)
     Billy (3-4)
     Chalski (5-3)
     Chuck (2-3)
     Dekker (1-5)
     Dick (4-4)
     Juse (3-5)
     Shoaf (3-3)
     Sovic (6-4)
     Spencer (3-3)


Shoaf vs....
     Andre (4-3)
     Bardey (4-2)
     Billy (6-1)
     Chalski (3-3)
     Chuck (2-5)
     Dekker (6-2)
     Dick (4-5)
     Juse (6-1)
     Schank/Souts (3-3)
     Sovic (3-5)
     Spencer (4-5)


Sovic vs....
     Andre (3-3)
     Bardey (4-3)
     Billy (4-1)
     Chalski (5-2)
     Chuck (4-2)
     Dekker (5-3)
     Dick (4-4)
     Juse (3-3)
     Schank/Souts (4-6)
     Shoaf (5-3)
     Spencer (5-3)


Spencer vs....
     Andre (6-4)
     Bardey (5-4)
     Billy (3-4)
     Chalski (2-5-1)
     Chuck (4-3)
     Dekker (1-4)
     Dick (3-1-1)
     Juse (3-3)
     Schank/Souts (3-3)
     Shoaf (5-4)
     Sovic (3-5)

Being an egomaniac, the first thing I noticed is that only one franchise, Schank/Souts, has a winning record against me. And that's not all Schank's dominant regular season teams of the mid-aughts, either. Two of those wins have come during the Souts era, including last week, which I guess I shouldn't have been as surprised about as I was. Here are some other things I noticed:

History
Thanks to having two more weeks of regular season than opponents in the league, we each play two people at least twice a year. And thanks to ESPN simply replicating our schedule from year to year, those additional games have been multiplied. Throw in playoff meetings, and you end with some match-ups that have happened far more often than others. If you want to base rivalries simply on games played against each other, the most hated rivalry in BIFL belongs to Chuck & Dick, who've played each other 11 times since 2004. These two are like the old Norris Division of the NFL, except that I haven't tired of Chris Berman talking about them. A slew of other match-ups have 10 games of history behind them. They are:
Andre vs. Spencer
Bardey vs. Chalski
Billy vs. Dick
Billy vs. Juse
Chuck vs. Dekker
Dekker vs. Juse
Schank/Souts vs. Sovic
Like the divisional rivalries of the NFL, these are teams that have learned to hate each other over time, as a result of seeing each other's ugly mugs too often. Then, of course, there's...

Dominance
Some rivalries feature a clear top and bottom. Think of Yankees-Red Sox in the 20th Century. These two teams hated each other, not so much as worthy adversaries but as the hatred between a bully and a nerd. Here are the most dominant BIFL rivalries (winning percentage of dominant team in parentheses):
Andre over Billy (.875)
Bardey over Andre (.857)
Shoaf over Billy (.857)
Shoaf over Juse (.857)
Billy over Bardey (.833)
Dekker over Schank/Souts (.833)
Dekker over Spencer (.800)
Sovic over Billy (.800)
Bardey over Chuck (.750)
Chalski over Chuck (.750)
Schank/Souts over Andre (.750)
Shoaf over Dekker (.750)
You'll probably notice that Billy is on the wrong side of a lot of those match-ups, but he does seem to have some kind of power over Bardey. You'll also notice that Shoaf's allegedly strong franchise has actually just been padding his record all these years by beating up on league weaklings Billy and Justin. That may explain why he makes it to the finals every year and loses. Of course, one factor in these dominant relationship is...

Streaks
The title of streakiest franchise in BIFL has to go to Andre, who is involved in the three longest streaks in league history. The Schank/Souts franchise beat Andre in their first five encounters, which sounds bad until you realize that Andre himself beat Billy in their first seven contests, not giving up a victory until last season. That streak is the longest in BIFL history to this point, but the longest active streak also involves Andre, this time on the losing end. In their last six match-ups, Andre has been unable to beat Bardois, who will get the chance to tie the record next week. The last thing I noticed while compiling this information was...

Patterns
There are several match-ups in BIFL history that have traded off wins. These owners seem to have reached some sort of gay "you win one, I'll win one" agreement, and frankly it sickens me:
Chalski vs. Rousseau
Chalski vs. Shoaf
and
Dekker vs. Dick
have all gone win-loss-win-loss-win-loss.
Schank/Souts vs. Shoaf
have tried to throw us off the scent by going win-win-win-loss-loss-loss, but I was in the GT program in elementary school and I know a pattern when I see it. Looks like Souts has three wins coming to him. The last pattern I noticed involved Billy and Dick, but apparently Billy couldn't convince Dick to trade off wins with him and settled for one out of four: win-loss-loss-loss-win-loss-loss-loss-win. That's fun to say if you follow the rhythm of a Native American chant ("HI-ya-hey-ha, HI-ya-hey-ya...").

So who's your rival? Is it the team you've played the most? The one that you just can't seem to beat? The one you've battled back and forth with for years? Or just the one you can't stand? Rivalries can develop in any number of ways, but hopefully this gives you a little more insight into yours, and a little more smack to talk the next time you face them.