Rivals Rivalry Week: Top coaching rivalries of all-time

College football rivalries are in part, driven by the coaches of the teams involved. When annual matchups go beyond just the players on the field, the added element of the coaches involved can sometimes produce explosive results. The following rivalries wouldn’t have been what they are today if not for some notable coaching battles along the way.

MORE RIVALRY WEEK: Best rivalry? | Big-brother rivalries | Dead rivalries

When the games played between two coaches over the course of the decade is deemed The Ten Year War, it’s clearly a bona fide rivalry. The record between the two was nearly dead-even, with Schembechler just getting the edge with a 5-4-1 mark. Although the two coaches had a strong mutual respect for each other - Hayes hoped to groom Schembechler to succeed him at Ohio State after coaching him during his years as a player - the games between the two were peppered with moments of flared tempers and tightly contested outcomes. Four of the games during their tenure were decided by a field goal or less and both teams finished tied for the Big Ten championship six out of those 10 seasons.

Bowden and Spurrier never exchanged punches as their two teams did before their game in 1998, but it’s not as though they didn’t spar back-and-forth with some verbal jabs. Spurrier famously referred to Florida State as Free Shoes University in 1993 after it was discovered that an agent had paid for $6,000 worth of apparel from Foot Locker for a number of players. The following season, one of the more memorable games between the two was memorialized as The Choke at Doak, when the Gators blew a 31-3 lead in the fourth quarter en route to a Seminole win. Bowden got the better of the 12-year rivalry, finishing with a 7-4-1 record.

The Holtz-Paterno rivalry (1986-92) wasn’t characterized by a compelling personal backstory between the two coaches so much as it was by what those coaches meant for their respective schools at that point in time. Gerry Faust had a forgettable run as the Irish head coach from 1981-85 before Holtz was hired, and by his third season in South Bend, Holtz led Notre Dame into its annual game with Penn State as the No. 1 team in the nation for three consecutive years. Holtz won two of those three against Paterno, but JoePa ended up getting the better of the seven-year series between the two, 4-3.

Longevity and reputation of the respective coaches and programs make this a memorable one, but in truth, Switzer owned the series between Oklahoma and Nebraska during the time he and Osborne were in charge. Between 1973 and 1988, Switzer won 12 of the 17 games, but Nebraska finished third and second in the nation in the 1982 and 1983 seasons - part of a three-year winning streak over Switzer and the Sooners. Osborne took the final meeting between the two with a 7-3 win.

Harvard vs. Yale is the longest-running annual rivalry in American sports history, dating to 1897. The only time since then that the two schools didn’t play was due to the interference of World War I and II. Cozza just edged Restic in the 23 times the two played each other, 13-10, although the biggest win between the two schools may have come in 2004, after the two coaches’ times had passed, and Yale students tricked Harvard fans into holding up signs spelling out “We Suck.” Cozza also finished the rivalry with the upper hand, winning six of the final seven games against Restic.