MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[Gregory Sager]

Actually I had a good chuckle that the tweet was touting Hope and Kalamazoo as rivals 

It never ceases to make me chuckle whenever I'm reminded how many teams view Hope as their "rival". It's probably just the product of when your team is having some success, without a true rival, your "rival" becomes the team at the top. But that doesn't explain why it tends to be Hope and not Calvin who most MIAA teams seem to view as their rival. I've been to "rivalry" games against Hope at Albion, Alma, Kzoo, and Trine. Olivet often moves the Hope game to the old gym to have more of a rivalry feel. Is it because of football that these teams have developed more of a "rivalry" feeling with Hope and not Calvin?

I used to read the sig quotes in this room from a couple of the Kalamazoo fans and chuckle at the fact that the focus of their animosity was Hope -- even during periods when Calvin was the dominant hoops power in the MIAA.

Your surmise about football seems like a good guess, unless there is some issue (or perceived issue) regarding Hope in the eyes of other MIAA fans that I don't know about. After all, it can't really be about overall success. The two Dutch-American rivals seem to hand the MIAA Commissioner's Cup back and forth between Holland and Grand Rapids on a consistent basis. Calvin's won 11 national titles in four different sports, while Hope's won four national titles in two different sports, so if it's national success that draws the ire of the Olivet or Alma or Trine faithful, it ought to be oriented towards the teams wearing maroon and gold. (Don't shoot the messenger, Hope fans; I'm simply a neutral observer trying to analyze an honest question from a Hope supporter as to why the other MIAA schools view Hope as their main nemesis and not Calvin.)

Football is a high-profile sport, even on the D3 level, and it draws a disproportionate number of fans (and has a bigger student-athlete alumni following) than other sports. A lot of people base their idea of a college rivalry upon football, even though Hope fans and Calvin fans obviously don't. It stands to reason, then, that fans of the other MIAA schools might hold a more benign opinion of Calvin, which has never taken the field against any of their schools for a football game, than of Hope -- even though Hope isn't even close to being the perennial neighborhood bully in MIAA football that it is in, say, women's basketball or women's volleyball. (Albion and Trine have historically had just as much success on the gridiron as Hope, and even Olivet and Adrian have won MIAA titles in that sport in recent memory.)

[sac]

Kalamazoo is actually Hope's most played series in men's basketball at 219 games dating back to 1914, Calvin is third at 210 dating back to 1920.  Alma is second at 211 dating to 1913. 

Prior to Calvin joining the league in 1956, Kalamazoo was Hope's closest league rival and is still 2nd closest.  Kzoo also had and still kind of does have a large Dutch ancestry.

[Gregory Sager]

Kzoo also had and still kind of does have a large Dutch ancestry.

I know. My Dutch-American great-grandmother was born and raised in Kalamazoo.

[HOPEful]

Prior to Calvin joining the league in 1956, Kalamazoo was Hope's closest league rival and is still 2nd closest.  Kzoo also had and still kind of does have a large Dutch ancestry.

The more I think about it, Kalamazoo, Albion, and Trine make sense to me. I think the Kzoo and Hope rivalry would be more two sided if the Hornets were regularly better in sports other than tennis. Albion historically has been the best team in the MIAA in football, dating back to the very beginnings of the sport (fun fact, Albion is the only MIAA school to have beaten the University of Michigan in football) Trine, being a newer addition to the MIAA, makes sense too in with the rivalries in football and women's basketball... Alma and Olivet though?

[Flying Dutch Fan]

I believe it comes down to the MIAA Commisioners Cup.  While GS mentioned it bouncing back and forth between Hope and Calvin, it really has been dominated by Hope, with Hope winning it 45% of the time over 83 seasons.  Here is the history of the cup (NOTE: no cup awarded in 19-20 or 20-21)

SCHOOL - TOTAL - MOST RECENT
Adrian - 0 - NA
Albion - 13 - 1978-79
Alma - 5 - 1969-70
Calvin - 12 - 2017-18
Hope - 38 - 2021-22
Kalamazoo - 15 - 1977-78
Olivet - 0 - NA
Trine - 0 - NA

[Gregory Sager]

When I said that the MIAA Commissioner's Cup went back and forth between Holland and Grand Rapids, I was speaking in the present tense; i.e., I was talking about recent history. Hope's won it the past two times it's been handed out, but Calvin won it for four school years in a row before that. Hope won it the school year before that, and Calvin the school year prior, which takes us back ten years.

And each time it was the other member of the Rivalry that finished second.

There's obviously a ceiling that the next two best MIAA all-rounders, Trine and Albion, can't break through ... but it's also obviously a ceiling that's two layers thick.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

When I said that the MIAA Commissioner's Cup went back and forth between Holland and Grand Rapids, I was speaking in the present tense; i.e., I was talking about recent history. Hope's won it the past two times it's been handed out, but Calvin won it for four school years in a row before that. Hope won it the school year before that, and Calvin the school year prior, which takes us back ten years.

And each time it was the other member of the Rivalry that finished second.

There's obviously a ceiling that the next two best MIAA all-rounders, Trine and Albion, can't break through ... but it's also obviously a ceiling that's two layers thick.

True enough - but of course rivalries (even one-sided ones) are mostly built over the long term.  Students arrive to a school and likely inherit who their rival is based on the existing rivalry - something they learn from the upper classmen.  When you perpetuate that year by year and decade by decade, I think you end up where we are -  with Hope being the target rival for many schools. 

[Gregory Sager]

Your point's very valid, although, given how long Calvin has been a multi-sport power within the MIAA on a more or less equal basis with Hope (sans the gridiron), and an even bigger power beyond the league's environs, there has to be more to it than that.

Of course, while it's common to perceive of rivalries as being multi-generational, and most famous rivalries are illustrative of that kind of length (Hope/Calvin, Wabash/DePauw, Amherst/Williams, and Ithaca/Cortland all being classic examples), that's not always the case. The insertion of relative MIAA newcomer Trine into this discussion is a good example of that. And, to use the context of the league I know best as a source of examples, rivalries in and of themselves can wax and wane to the point where they flare up from out of nowhere or practically cease to exist. To wit:

* The oldest rivalry in the CCIW is Millikin/Illinois Wesleyan. It's the rivalry that all of the old downstate duffers point to on both sides. But, for the past two generations, Millikin has lagged badly in almost every sport while Illinois Wesleyan has been an all-sports power within the league and beyond. The Millikin fanbase has sustained its ire towards the Green Weenies by re-positioning the rivalry as a classic have-nots vs. haves David-and-Goliath story (accentuating their deeply-held narrative that Millikin is a school for sturdy blue-collar common folk while Illinois Wesleyan is a citadel of preppy elitist financiers and shady insurance-company minions). But, from all indications, younger generations of IWU folks just don't give much of a crap about Millikin anymore. They view Wheaton and Augustana as their athletic rivals (and, likely, North Central will increasingly draw their antipathy as well, given that NCC is the current dominant all-sports power in the CCIW). Given that Millikin is showing signs of resurgence in a number of sports, it'll be interesting to see if latecomer Gen X and Millennial IWU fans remain as indifferent towards Millikin as they've been over the past twenty/thirty years.

* Similar to how Kalamazoo fans feel about Hope and Millikin fans feel about IWU, North Park fans have always had it in for Wheaton. It's mostly due to non-athletics reasons having to do with religious issues and extensive family ties that have a bit more of a Hope/Calvin feel to it than Hope/Kalamazoo, but the result's been the same: NPU fans can't stand the very mention of the word "Wheaton", whereas Wheaton fans have always utterly and benignly been barely aware that North Park even exists. But that began to change two decades ago when North Park got good at men's soccer and first challenged and then became a legitimate threat to Wheaton's hegemony in its most successful (and extremely well-supported) sport. Wheaton fans to this day still don't pay much attention to NPU -- except in that one sport, in which WC/NPU has become one of the best soccer rivalries in D3. As added emphasis, I should point out that at soccer games it's Wheaton students who wear "Beat North Park" t-shirts rather than North Park students wearing "Beat Wheaton" t-shirts.

* Wheaton is very elastic in its rivalries. As mentioned, where men's soccer is concerned, Wheaton's biggest rival by far is North Park. But in football, it's the trophy rivalry versus North Central (they play annually for the Little Brass Bell) that matters. And in men's basketball, the biggest rivalry for Wheaton far and away is Illinois Wesleyan. (And IWU fans who are below retirement age definitely reciprocate that.)

* Augustana has, over the decades, been even more dominant in the all-sports schema within the CCIW than Hope has ever been within the MIAA. But nobody really looks upon Augie as its main rival. At times Illinois Wesleyan fans have inclined that way in the wake of Millikin's athletics failures, but even that's diluted by the fact that Wheaton is the team that Titans fans really want to beat the most in IWU's most popular and historically most successful sport, men's basketball (since men's golf and women's track & field don't really have fanbases on the D3 level). And now, with Augie slipping in an all-sports context, people around the CCIW are even less inclined to choose Augie as their school's biggest rival. Interestingly, Augie's successor as the CCIW's all-sports behemoth, North Central, really doesn't make anybody's blood boil, either, aside from Wheaton in the context of football.

TL;DR -- Generational rivalries aren't necessarily fixed in stone, and tradition doesn't fully explain the mechanics of college rivalries.

[Dutchman17]

6'2 PG Tyson Mann from Grandville commits to Hope.  Solid pickup, and looks like he plans to play football as well

[Flying Dutch Fan]

Two more recruits to add:

Donte Work: 6-8 F Coldwater(MI) to Olivet

Dwayne Ray Jr: 5-9 G North Farmington(MI) to Albion

[KnightSlappy]

The insertion of relative MIAA newcomer Trine into this discussion is a good example of that. And, to use the context of the league I know best as a source of examples, rivalries in and of themselves can wax and wane to the point where they flare up from out of nowhere or practically cease to exist. To wit:

Something I've found interesting vis-a-vis Calvin, Hope, and Trine on the hardwood recently.

Calvin seems to have Trine's number who has Hope's number who has Calvin's number.

Calvin has won 6 of 8 vs. Trine (+26 pts for Calvin).
Trine has won 6 of 8 vs. Hope (+60 pts for Trine).
Hope has won 6 of 8 vs. Calvin (+7 pts for Calvin).

[KnightSlappy]

Seeing as we're about 6-months out from the MIAA coaches poll being released (it's just around the corner!), what do we anticipate the results of the voting to be?

My gut says:

1. Calvin
2. Hope
3. Trine
4. Olivet
5. Alma
6. Albion
7. Adrian
8. Kalamazoo

[Greek Tragedy]

Matt Snyder retweeted:

https://twitter.com/Indianagamehoop/status/1655982164393984015?s=20

[HOPEful]

The insertion of relative MIAA newcomer Trine into this discussion is a good example of that. And, to use the context of the league I know best as a source of examples, rivalries in and of themselves can wax and wane to the point where they flare up from out of nowhere or practically cease to exist. To wit:

Something I've found interesting vis-a-vis Calvin, Hope, and Trine on the hardwood recently.

Calvin seems to have Trine's number who has Hope's number who has Calvin's number.

Calvin has won 6 of 8 vs. Trine (+26 pts for Calvin).
Trine has won 6 of 8 vs. Hope (+60 pts for Trine).
Hope has won 6 of 8 vs. Calvin (+7 pts for Calvin).

I wondered how Hope could be up 6 of 8 and yet Calvin have a plus 7 point advantage. Obviously, I had already blocked last season's 81-49 beat down out of my memory.

[HOPEful]

A lot of people base their idea of a college rivalry upon football, even though Hope fans and Calvin fans obviously don't....

This isn't completely true. My dad, a football player for Hope in the 70s, holds his strongest animosity today against Olivet and Albion. I've heard stories of a game against Olivet that ended in an all-out rumble royale fist fight in which Coach Ray Smith, still built like the All-American UCLA fullback he was, scooping up and hurling his own players back to their bench. Or how Hope was invited to play in the postseason after an undefeated 1975 season, but the league voted to not allow it. A year later, Albion was invited and changed their swing vote.

As you also pointed out, some of the best rivalries go beyond sports. This is why the Hope/Calvin rivalry has been so strong historically. But more recently, I think the rivalry between Hope and Calvin has died down while the Hope and Trine rivalry grows stronger, in at least part, due to football. Girl's basketball more so. If I dare make a somewhat hot take, there have been many times over the past several years where the Hope v. Trine rivalry has felt stronger than Hope v. Calvin in ways that go beyond sports. Hope has distanced themselves quite a bit from the RCA for a while now becoming a more non-denominational Christian school "rooted in reformed tradition". And even though they're still firmly CRC, the average Calvin student seems to hold less fervent feelings for the denomination than their forefathers. With the religious component disappearing, at least as a driving force in the rivalry and even if the older fan base still cares, how much does the average 18-22 year old care about the historical context of the rivalry?