Michigan versus Ohio State. Florida State battles Florida. Texas Longhorns line up against Oklahoma Sooners. It's Harvard facing Yale again. Whether the rivalry involves football, basketball or the debate team, these traditional clashes on American campuses are simply awesome, baby! The taste of victory over a rival school is sweet and can translate into bragging rights for an entire year or more.

Collegians also get pretty passionate about crushing their rivals when it comes to the Olympic sport of table tennis. The cheers seem louder, the offensive attacks are relentless and players go all out to bury a rival university.

Wisconsin players really get pumped if they knock off fellow Big Ten schools like Purdue and Illinois. In the PAC-10, Southern California players get a little crazy when they beat up on cross-town rival UCLA. In the Southeastern Conference, it's always big when Alabama beats in-state rival Auburn. 

University of Wisconsin table tennis player Ruichen “Richard” Qian is a frequent face in the crowd at Badger football and basketball games on his campus in Madison.

“While these games can get quite crazy, the table tennis matches are exciting, too, in that the fans and players all know each other well,” Qian says. Turn the clock back to 2007, and Qian remembers the table tennis competition was fierce. Rivals Purdue, Wisconsin and Illinois-Urbana/Champaign were locked in a three-way tie for first place in the division as they fought mightily (with their paddles) to qualify for the NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships. "For the next few years, the battles have been close with these teams,'' said the Wisconsin standout. 

Jump back to last year, and Purdue and Wisconsin table tennis players were down to their final team contest to determine who would qualify for the 2009 Championships in Rochester, Minnesota. Wisconsin played well early on until the Purdue supporters became a factor and “everyone from Purdue started cheering after every point they won.” Eventually the momentum shifted back to the Badgers and raucous cheers erupted from the crowd of Wisconsin players and fans.

Wisconsin ended up winning the team contest and qualifying for the 2009 Championships. The Badgers hope to return for the 2010 Championships when the event comes to their home state. The bottom line is that playing a college rival ignites a firestorm of "school pride and spirit,'' said the Wisconsin senior who's one of the table tennis team's architects. 

Move from the Upper Midwest to the West Coast, and you’ll find different teams but a similar story line and rivalries that are just as intense. USC-UCLA showdowns are an amazing thing to watch. Hoops, baseball, table tennis, golf or checkers. It doesn't matter. Each team seems to try much harder to get a "W'' and go home with a little extra swagger.

Subal Mehta, a top-notch table tennis player with the Southern California Trojans, hears the shouts from the crowd when his team takes on the UCLA Bruins. It can definitely heat up the action in the heart of Los Angeles. A native of India who first landed on American soil in August 2009, Mehta didn't know the history of the rivalry growing up thousands of miles away. But he caught on quickly. He noticed the crowds for the USC-UCLA table tennis games were bigger and louder. 

“People shouted to smear some UCLA blood on my paddle. I said ‘yeah, yeah,’ but didn't care that much. But when the match started, trust me, I could feel the pressure,” Mehta said.

He plays against opponents from schools like UC Irvine, UC Riverside, Cal State Fullerton, Cal Tech and Santa Monica College, to name a few. But USC-UCLA is always something special, just like it is when their football teams collide on national TV every fall. 

In a table tennis match where the two rivals played their hearts out, “UCLA struggled real hard but eventually faltered in their tracks,” Subal said. Among the USC fans and players, he noticed “lots of happiness and high fives in the air.”

But rivals always find a way to play another day, forget about past records and go at it again. They hold nothing back from one year to the next. 

While it may not have quite the intensity of USC-UCLA, there's a little rivalry building in the Dixie Division in the Deep South as well. Teams like Mississippi College face in-state rivals like Mississippi State and the University of Southern Mississippi. Teams from neighboring states like the University of Alabama, Alabama-Huntsville and West Florida add to the spirited matches as they take their games across state lines.