Way back in the day, declaring the bugeaters our "rival" was a pretty bold move by Mac1. It worked in that it set our sights pretty high. Apparently, Mac1 actually made a deliberate decision between the land thieves and the bugeaters - I've heard/read that in the end he chose NU because Switzer/OU was dirtier than Osborne/NU, and he didn't want to set our sights on a program that would be going down to NCAA sanctions in the mid-term future. I also think that he recognized that teams could have more than one "rival," but not more than two, and OU already had NU and UT; whereas NU had OU and ??.
I bring all that up because I think there are some lessons to be learned:
1: Don't call out a tier II team (or even a tier 1b) as your "most hated" - regardless of the their douchebaggery - you're setting your sights too low. There's a reason Mizzou was never going to be our rival.
2: Don't call out a team that has a reasonable chance of badly sucking during the time it will take to return to the top.
and a distant 3: Is there room in their "rivalry slate" for CU?
No. 1 means that ASU, UA, OSU, UCLA, Cal, WSU, and UU are all out.
No. 2 is a harder call.
Stanford historically has about the highest volatility of any football program out there - they go through stretches of greatness and then stretches of suckiness, both of which are periodically interrupted by bouts of mediocrity. I honestly see no reason why they won't change from historic pattern. Stanford is out.
Will the NCAA ever catch up to Oregon? Will Phil Knight keel over, and what happens if he does? Football history tends to say that a reversion to mean is the most likely mid to long term outcome (and their mean level of performance is very, very bad), but is this time different?
UW is about as close to a peer school as we have in the P12, both on and off the field. A "reversion to mean" for them would probably be a small improvement in performance compared to where they are now. This is a team that, like CU, should be consistently ranked (or at least included in "others receiving votes"), consistently goes to mid to upper tier bowl games, and is disappointed with lower tier bowl games. If we want to set our sights on a school that, over time, we should play to a .500 record, UW is that school.
USC is the football class of the conference. They are the only other school besides us with both a mnc and a heisman - difference is that they have multiples of both (7 of each by my count, their count is different...).
No 3 would exclude USC, but leave open UO and UW.
IMO No 3 isn't that important, we're big enough assholes that we force other schools to recognize our rival status, so the choice to me is UO, UW or USC. The aspirational part of me says USC. The "I hate their nouvea rich douchebag fans" says UO. It's weird, but I look at UW and almost see our reflection in a mirror - it's hard to hate that...
At the end of the day, our road to the next MNC will always go through USC. So it's USC. **** those guys.