While this past Saturday’s Battle for the Golden Horseshoe was a rivalry game, and indeed an exciting one, it quails before the one this week. For whatever reason, be it our proximity, our respective institution’s ages, or our massive gap in academic prestige, beating up on Sac State is somehow just way more fun than taking on Cal Poly or Stanford or Nevada or anyone else in our proximity.

The Sac State rivalry exists in almost every sport. The men’s soccer matchup is called the Causeway Classico. The baseball matchup takes place at a minor league stadium. The women’s basketball game is tomorrow. But the football game is particularly special in that 1) due to UC Davis’ football-specific membership in Sac State’s conference it’s a league game, unlike in most sports; 2) there’s only one matchup per year; 3) it’s worth a lot of Causeway Cup points; and 4) we play for a trophy.

The rivalry game also has two advantages in that its the last game of the year and past records seem to bear little impact on actual game results. (No, really, the games seem almost completely random; more on this later on in the week.) In the midst of UCD’s current streak of losing seasons, the Causeway Classic has become a chance for UC Davis Football to perform one final act of redemption before being routinely boxed out of playoffs.

And does Aggie football ever need redemption this year.