Today I wrote a column about the Penn-Northwestern women's lacrosse rivalry. While it's certainly missing some elements of a classic rivalry (namely parity between the schools over a long period of time) it nonetheless has developed into Penn's best team's biggest rivalry.

But has it become the school's biggest rivalry?  Considering the men's basketball hasn't played a truly meaningful game against Princeton since 2004, that rivalry certainly isn't at its height.  Penn-Cornell has fast become a more important rivalry as Cornell has won the last two M. Hoops Ivy titles.  In football, Penn-Cornell historically was a huge game, one that nearly rivaled (no pun intended) Harvard-Yale.

So I ask you, which of the following rivalries is the biggest currently at Penn:

• Penn-Cornell Football
• Penn-Cornell Basketball
• Penn-Northwestern W. Lax
• Penn-Princeton Basketball
• Any other one you can think of?

Ed Note: For the next week -- and possibly longer if the readers don't run him out of town  -- Noah Becker, a senior History major from Wayne, Pa., will be providing some guest blog posts. So without further ado, here is his first one, a look at whether or not a Penn-Cornell basketball rivalry exists.

This post is adorable and flattering. But c’mon Cornell, you already have a sports rival, a real sports rival with a full Wikipedia entry (where else do you think I get my knowledge?). This rival has both an awesomely smelly tradition and full scale administration crackdowns for rowdy fan behavior. In fact, it meets most of the standards that classify a Level Three Hatfield-McCoy Rivalry. Not all of these levels must be met in order to qualify as a mere Level One Friendly Rival, nor do they have to be met in any specific order. But, unfortunately for the Hill People of New York, Penn-Cornell meets none of them.

1. Sustained equality of ability

This criterion is met only in the sense that both Penn and Cornell have been playing basketball against each other and thus both teams had the theoretical ability to play said sport. Otherwise, Penn thoroughly dominates the series. Since a 74-56 Quakers win on Feb. 7, 1969 -- which I use since Saturday's Cornell at Penn game will mark the 40th anniversary of what I'm sure was a rousing match -- Penn is 66-13 against the Big Red. Amazingly, if Cornell won every single game for the next 20 years -- and of course, in a future that dystopian, 2+2 would equal 5 and freshman writing seminars would be taught in Newspeak -- on Feb. 7, 2029, the Quakers would still have a double digit advantage in wins in the series in the last 60 years.

2. Proximity or Class Warfare

Location (Louisville v. Kentucky, Arizona v. Arizona State, Kansas v. Missouri) or a disparity regarding the schools’ relative controls of the means of production—i.e. the “Haves” against the “Have-Nots”—(Harvard v. Cornell in hockey, Little Cowboys v. Little Giants, Notre Dame v. Anyone) play major roles in fostering intense rivalries. In fact, the best rivalries contain elements of both (Duke v. UNC, Villanova v. St. Joe’s, Pre-2004 Yankees v. Pre-2004 Red Sox).

As anyone who’s ever traveled to Ithaca can tell you, it’s not close and a characterization of Penn as an old, Ivory Tower institution rings false. Sure, historically Penn’s picked on the other Ivy League basketball teams, and it was founded before Cornell, but when constructing the evil, plutocratic, Ivy League-educated, blue-blooded villain for literature or film, the elite status conferred by Harvard, Yale or Princeton makes for a more convincing snob.

3. Undeniable, uncontrollable mutual feelings of loathing

Fans of both teams in the rivalry must believe their rival to have a truly despicable, untenable aspect that causes a deep antipathy. The modern king of this is Bill Belichick whose rivalry with the NFL -- by this I mean the league and everyone who populates it -- drove him to a sort of Shakespearean madness which included running up the score on poor, defenseless coaching legend Joe Gibbs. This category while intentionally ambiguous is generally populated by the nationally disdained (Duke Basketball, Notre Dame Football, Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees).

Meanwhile, what is there to loathe about Cornell? Steve Donahue is a former Penn assistant coach, their best players, Louis Dale, Jeff Footer and Ryan Wittman, seem generally unobjectionable and many of the best jokes in The Office revolve around the Big Red.

So what is their relationship to Penn if not a rival? It seems more like the relationship between a younger brother and his older, cooler sibling with Cornell getting picked on, trying to emulate Penn -- by hiring Donahue, and desperately trying to measure up to Penn by telling them about the “rivalry” between them. It’s cute and flattering that Cornell wants a rivalry, but it’s just not true.