THE BOWL ELIGIBLE BLOG
The Most Played Rivalries in College Football
Among the 46 rivalries in our Bragging Rights dataset, Minnesota and Wisconsin have met 135 times, more than any other pair. The most played rivalries, ranked by meetings.
The scope note goes first, because it matters: our Bragging Rights dataset tracks 46 rivalries, every one of them double-sourced, with series records frozen at the end of the 2025 season. This post ranks those 46 by meetings played. It does not claim to rank every series in the history of the sport; some famous pairs are not in our set, and we would rather show you a list we can defend than a top ten we cannot. Defended, the 46 series in the dataset add up to 4,569 meetings. Here is the top of the pile.
1. Minnesota vs. Wisconsin: 135 meetings
The most played rivalry we track, and it is not even settled. First played in 1890, the series record in our data reads Minnesota 64, Wisconsin 63, with 8 ties. One game of separation after 135 meetings spread over 135 years. Minnesota also won the most recent one, 17–7 in 2025, and owns the series' great modern heist: in 2018 the Gophers walked into Madison and won 37–15 to end a 14-game Wisconsin win streak in the series. A rivalry this old is supposed to have a bully. This one refuses.
2. Oregon vs. Oregon State: 129 meetings
First played in 1894. Oregon leads 70–49 with 10 ties, and won the 2025 meeting 41–7, but the dataset lists the series as paused, a strange new chapter for a game this old. Its eternal claim to fame is the 1983 meeting, the Toilet Bowl: a scoreless tie in a torrential rainstorm, the last scoreless tie in Division I football. One hundred twenty-nine meetings, and the most famous one ended with nobody scoring at all.
3. Cincinnati vs. Miami (OH): 128 meetings
The Battle for the Victory Bell is the closest thing on this list to a coin flip: Cincinnati leads 61–60 with 7 ties after 128 meetings dating to 1888. In 2023, Miami won in overtime to end a 16-game losing streak in the series and pull it dead level at 60–60–7; Cincinnati took the lead back in 2024, 27–16. The dataset lists this one as paused too. A 137-year argument, suspended with one game between them.
4. Indiana vs. Purdue: 127 meetings
Purdue leads this one comfortably, 77–44 with 6 ties, since 1891. Comfort is currently theoretical. The data's famous moment is the 2024 meeting, when No. 10 Indiana won 66–0, the most lopsided result in series history, and the most recent meeting in 2025 finished 56–3 Indiana. The Old Oaken Bucket series is the top of this list's best current argument that series records describe the past, not the future.
5. Army vs. Navy: 126 meetings
First played in 1890, Navy leads 64–55 with 7 ties, and the 2025 edition finished 17–16 for Navy, because this game is contractually incapable of being normal. The data's famous moment goes back to 1963, when Navy's 21–15 win, played after President Kennedy's assassination, became the game where instant replay made its American television debut. No rivalry in the set carries more ceremony per meeting.
The 122 and 121 clubs
Two series sit at 122 meetings. The Egg Bowl (Ole Miss vs. Mississippi State, first played 1901, Ole Miss leads the series) gave the dataset its best-named moment: the Immaculate Deflection in 1983, when a gust of wind stopped a Mississippi State game-winning field goal attempt short and Ole Miss escaped 24–23. The Palmetto Bowl (Clemson vs. South Carolina, 1896) has Clemson ahead 74–44 with 4 ties.
At 121 meetings you get a logjam of giants: the Red River Rivalry (Texas leads Oklahoma 65–51–5, and won the 2025 meeting 23–6), The Game (Michigan vs. Ohio State, first played 1897, Michigan leads the series), and the Border War (Kansas vs. Missouri, 1891), which the dataset lists as resumed; Missouri, which leads 58–54–9, won the 2025 renewal 42–31. At 120 sit the Lone Star Showdown (Texas leads Texas A&M 78–37–5) and the Big Game (Stanford leads California 61–49–10).
Fine print and oddities
Two quirks from the data worth knowing. First, in 12 of the 46 series, the win, loss, and tie columns do not add up to the meetings total, which the dataset attributes to vacated or unplayed meetings; where that is true (the Egg Bowl and Michigan vs. Ohio State among them), we have cited the series leader rather than pretend the arithmetic is cleaner than it is. Second, the oldest first meeting in the whole set belongs to a series near the bottom of the meetings list: Michigan and Notre Dame first played in 1887 and have managed only 44 meetings since, because the series keeps stopping. Longevity is not the same as frequency. Nobody proves that like those two.
At the other end of the table sits Bedlam, Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State, 118 meetings and the most one-sided high-volume series in the set: Oklahoma's 90 wins are the most by any school in any of our 46 rivalries, against 21 losses and 7 ties. It is also paused, with Oklahoma State winning the last scheduled meeting in 2023.
Want the daily version of this? Bragging Rights serves one rivalry a day with four questions and the full series record as the receipts. And if the trophies these teams haul around are more your speed, our rivalry trophies ranked post covers the hardware, from a live turtle to a 98-pound bronze pig.