THE BOWL ELIGIBLE BLOG

The Longest Uninterrupted Rivalries in College Football

Our 46-rivalry file does not list every season, so it cannot certify a literal no-gap streak. It can rank the longest documented annual runs, led by 135 Minnesota-Wisconsin meetings.

Start with the honest limitation: our rivalry dataset does not contain a season-by-season schedule for each series. It records 46 rivalries, the first meeting, the total meetings, the most recent meeting, the next scheduled meeting, and whether the series is annual, paused, intermittent, or resumed. Series records are frozen at the end of 2025.

That is enough to rank documented endurance. It is not enough to certify that two schools played in every single calendar year. A series marked annual at the cutoff may have had an old gap, and a total below the number of calendar years in its span does not by itself identify the missing season. So this is not a fake streak list. It is the closest ranking the data can support: annual rivalries with the longest spans and the most recorded meetings.

The longest documented annual spans

Minnesota-Wisconsin is the endurance champion of the file. Its 135 meetings across a span that begins in 1890 and reaches 2025 are the most meetings recorded for any annual rivalry in the dataset. Minnesota won the most recent meeting in the file, 17-7 in 2025, and the next meeting is scheduled for 2026.

Army-Navy shares the 1890 starting point and also reaches 2025, but it has 126 recorded meetings, nine fewer than Minnesota-Wisconsin. Navy won the most recent meeting in the file, 17-16 in 2025. The similar start dates hide different densities, which is why the table uses meetings rather than pretending the first year alone can settle the ranking.

Auburn-Georgia, the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry, began in 1892 and has 130 meetings, second among annual series in the file. Georgia won the 2025 meeting listed in the dataset, 20-10. Indiana-Purdue is next by meetings among the oldest group, with 127 since 1891. Purdue still leads that series in the separate series-record fields, even though Indiana won the most recent meeting, 56-3 in 2025.

The near one-per-year club

A long span is not the only kind of persistence. Some younger series have packed meetings into almost every year of their documented range.

Notre Dame-Navy began in 1927 and had reached 98 meetings by 2025. That is 98 meetings across 99 calendar-year labels, one short of a meeting for every year in the span. Minnesota-Wisconsin has the same one-meeting gap across its much longer span. Notre Dame won the most recent meeting, 49-10 in 2025, and another meeting is scheduled for 2026.

USC-UCLA began in 1929 and has 95 meetings through 2025. The Egg Bowl began later than the oldest Big Ten series, in 1901, but Ole Miss and Mississippi State have still produced 122 meetings. The Red River Rivalry began in 1900 and has 121. The Palmetto Bowl began in 1896 and has 122.

Those totals matter because they separate a series that merely started early from one that kept returning. The dataset cannot prove there were no interruptions, but it can show which rivalries combined age, volume, and current annual status.

Why some famous old series are excluded

The oldest first meeting in the entire file belongs to Michigan-Notre Dame, first played in 1887. Cincinnati-Miami (OH) is next, first played in 1888, with 128 meetings. It is not in the table because its status is paused, and its most recent meeting in the file is from 2024. A paused series may resume, and the file lists a 2026 meeting, but paused is not the same thing as an active annual run.

Oregon-Oregon State has 129 meetings beginning in 1894, more than every annual series except Minnesota-Wisconsin and Auburn-Georgia. Its status is also paused, so it is excluded.

The Border War and Lone Star Showdown have 121 and 120 meetings respectively, but both are marked resumed. That label is the dataset's way of preserving the break. Kansas-Missouri returned in 2025 after a long absence described in the research report; Texas-Texas A&M resumed in 2024 after Texas joined the SEC. Their totals are enormous, but a resumed series cannot be treated as uninterrupted just because the current schedule is active again.

Bedlam is paused after a most recent meeting in 2023. Michigan-Notre Dame is paused after 2019, with the next meeting listed for 2033. Penn State-Pitt is paused after 2019 and has no next scheduled year in the file. Age alone does not keep a rivalry alive.

What can actually be claimed

The dataset supports three strong claims.

First, Minnesota-Wisconsin has the most meetings of any rivalry in the 46-series file, with 135, and it is still marked annual with a 2026 meeting scheduled.

Second, Auburn-Georgia has the second most meetings among annual rivalries, with 130, despite starting two years later.

Third, Notre Dame-Navy and Minnesota-Wisconsin are the annual series in the file that sit exactly one meeting below the number of calendar-year labels in their documented spans: 98 meetings across 99 labels for Notre Dame-Navy, and 135 across 136 for Minnesota-Wisconsin.

What it cannot claim is a certified list of series that never missed a year. That would require a year-by-year meeting ledger for every rivalry. Publishing a false streak ranking from summary fields would be easy. It would also be wrong.

The safer conclusion is still impressive. College football's oldest rivalries have survived conference changes, pauses elsewhere on the schedule, and more than a century of turnover. The ones at the top of this table are not just old. They are old, heavily played, and still active in the file.

Play the receipts in Bragging Rights, or compare the hardware attached to some of these series in our rivalry trophies ranking.