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A sports rivalry is intense competition between athletic teams or athletes. This pressure of competition is felt by players, coaches, and management, but is perhaps felt strongest by the fans. The intensity of the rivalry varies from a friendly competition on one end to serious violence on the other that, in one case (the Football War), was suggested to have led to military conflicts. Owners typically encourage rivalries as they tend to improve game attendance and television ratings for rivalry matches, but a rivalry that gets out of control can lead to fighting, hooliganism, rioting and some, with career-ending or even fatal consequences. Often the topic of sports rivalries is as heated and controversial as politics and religion. Rivalries stem from various sources. Simple geographic proximity as well as frequent meetings in important games can lead to rivalries. Games between two rivals of close geographical proximity are usually called a local derby, or simply just derby (UK: ; or AUS/US: ; ); a sporting fixture between two teams from the same town, city or region, particularly in association football. The phrase most likely originated from The Derby, a horse race in England, founded by the 12th Earl of Derby in 1780, since at least as early as 1840 'derby' has been used as a noun in English to denote any kind of sporting contest.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/derby )〕 Another widely reported theory, though not accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary, is that the phrase came about from the city of Derby itself. It was renowned as the site of a chaotic and exuberant game that involved the whole town and often resulted in fatalities. The goals were at Nuns Mill in the north and the Gallows Balk in the south of the town, and much of the action took place in the River Derwent or the Markeaton Brook. Nominally the players came from All Saints' and St Peter's parishes, but in practice the game was a free-for-all with as many as 1,000 players. A Frenchman who observed the match in 1829 wrote in horror, 'if Englishmen call this play, it would be impossible to say what they call fighting'. The traditional Shrovetide football match is commonplace in the town of Ashbourne, Derbyshire."〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=City's Shrovetide match give birth to 'local derby' phrase )〕 Compared to other parts of the world, true local derbies are rare in the United States and Canada, where the term crosstown rivalry is used to describe a rivalry between two teams in the same metropolitan area. Even those rivalries that can be considered "local derbies" due to geographic proximity often feature teams that primarily draw supporters from distinct geographic communities, largely because professional sports teams do not want to have to draw from the same people, so that each person has more money to spend on their team instead of dividing it among multiple teams. This is especially true for rivalries in the greater New York City area; while some local rivals may play home games less than 10 miles (16 km) apart, they represent distinct geographical communities. Two examples are the three-way rivalry between the New York Rangers (representing New York City), New York Islanders (representing Long Island), the New Jersey Devils, and formerly the Hartford Whalers (Connecticut) in the National Hockey League, and the former New York Knicks-New Jersey Nets rivalry in the National Basketball Association. The Knicks-Nets contest may develop into a full derby since the current Brooklyn Nets play in the New York borough of Brooklyn, an area also within the Knicks' fan base. A similar situation exists in the San Francisco Bay Area for baseball and American football; while the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics are based in very close proximity, as are the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders, their supporter bases are somewhat geographically distinct, separated by San Francisco Bay. Additionally, in Los Angeles, there are rivalries such as the Los Angeles Dodgers versus the Los Angeles Angels, based in Anaheim, in Major League Baseball. Minor leagues, being regional by their nature, feature numerous regional rivalries, some of which (e.g. the Staten Island Yankees vs. the Brooklyn Cyclones) are true crosstown rivalries. Social and political tensions can also be played out by proxy in a sports rivalry, as when the Indo–Pakistani political conflict spills over to an India–Pakistan cricket match, or when Glasgow's sectarian differences are expressed in the Celtic–Rangers derby (known as the Old Firm derby). The Old Firm is regarded as the biggest and most fierce rivalry in sports. Rivalries of the friendlier sort are common between college athletic programs in the United States and often involve pranks that rival student bodies play on each other, such as stealing the other school's mascot or painting school colors somewhere on the opposing school's campus. In some leagues, the match between the rivalries are officially regarded as important games and the winner gets an unusual prize (i.e. grill, trophy, high-definition television, etc.) ==American football== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「List of sports rivalries」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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