Down here in the college football ever-loving south, where license plates are not a mandatory thing on the front of the cars, novelty plates like the above are a pretty common thing. Especially the HOUSE DIVIDED plates that really like to drive home the notion that a couple, each member having gone to a different college, is ironically living with a collegiate arch-nemesis, based on popular rivalries.
House divided plates are pretty common down in Atlanta especially, since Atlanta is widely recognized as the unofficial center point of SEC country, and everyone seems to recognize the SEC as the undisputed dominant super power conference of college football. But regardless, at least once a day, it’s almost unavoidable to see a house divided plate in the city.
The thing is, at least in most cases it makes sense. Georgia/Alabama, Alabama/Auburn, Auburn/Florida. And then it goes inter-conference sometimes with Florida/Florida State, Florida State/Clemson, Clemson/South Carolina, etc, etc.
Frankly, as long as the rivalries seem somewhat justifiable and/or legit, I have no objection to it. If anything at all, it’s more of a positive nuance to recognize that in spite of the Romeo and Juliet perception between fans of opposing programs, when the day is over, people don’t give a flying fuck about collegiate alliances, in the name of love.
A little while ago, I was in my car, and I happened to notice another house divided license plate. One half of the plate had the Auburn logo on it, and the other half of it had the University of North Carolina on it. My brow scrunched at this odd pairing, and my mind scrambled to think of any instance I could remember where Auburn had played UNC in any football or basketball game, because those are the only college sports that the world actually cares about.
I couldn’t, because when the day is over, the schools are not actually rivals. They’re not even remotely geographically convenient to have any sort of territorial rivalry, since it’s kind of difficult to be rivals over something two states over.
Google tells me that the last time they played a football game against each other, it was 11 years ago. Way more than that, when they played basketball against each other. UNC won in both instances. A rivalry, I’d hardly call it, and not so much a “house divided,” as much as it’s mommy and daddy went to different schools.
The point is, why does a plate like that even exist? It’s dumb, and it’s dumb in its false assertion that the schools are remotely considered to be rivals.
The answer was actually very simple to find, because apparently these have gone beyond local novelty items, purchasable in regions in which this thought process might be commonplace, but into the commercialized market of customizable license plates, where anyone can create whatever combination they want, regardless of if it makes any sense or has any logic behind it. Hence, Auburn/UNC. And shit like this:
Seriously, East Carolina and Nebraska? According to this page, they’ve never played each other in football before. I’m barely able to recognize ECU as a Division-I team. But you know, at least they both are D-I schools. Otherwise, you get stuff like this:
In all fairness, there’s a geographical reason for the pairing of James Madison and Virginia Tech, but they’re not even in the same division. Games sparsely occur between the two out of a regional convenience and when Tech needs to pad their schedule (which ironically blew up in their face a few years back), but when the day is over, declaring this a rivalry enough to warrant a house divided anything is kind of pointless.
However, things apparently can still get more outlandish. Plates don’t even have to make any sense at all, as long as someone’s willing to pay money for pieces of plastic to slap on the front bumpers of their cars. In fact, they don’t even have to be the same sports anymore:
House divided: Chicago Cubs (a baseball team) and Indianapolis Colts (a football team).
Not even the same sport and not even remotely close to each other geographically. gg
