<p>I think people fail to realize that rivalries don't stop just because one school is considered better. For instance, as PITS pointed out, Stanford and Cal have a very heated rivalry even though Stanford has more prestige. This rivalry has been around for over 100 years, and many of those years Cal was thought as the better school (stanford's rise to prominence is fairly recent). Even when Cal had more prestige, the rivalry continued because its tradition.</p>