Absolutely not forced. I hate Atlanta, and I can promise you that everyone around me at the bar last night was cheering for the Pats almost like they were the Saints. It's the fans. Every time they come to town they are the most obnoxious, trash talking bunch of derelicts of any fan base. There are always fights in the Dome with them. The city poses as some LA of the South-the exact opposite of New Orleans. All faux glitz, no substance. Atlanta and their fans are the worst. The hate goes back to the NFC West days. Like I said, looking at it as an outsider it seems forced. By my own arbitrary rules, at the very minimum a good rivalry needs to be between teams who share the same state, or are in states bordering each other. You start skipping states, eh, it feels like reaching. And the fans thing, to this I also say "eh;" Reds fans flood Wrigley, but it feels more like annoyance as opposed to "YEAH, horsefeathers THE REDS." Any rivalry there feels more like a technicality than anything else. Obviously, that's not to say it's not an actual rivalry; it just feels like here in DC when I hear locals talking about the Redskins and the Giants like it's this heated, storied vendetta, and all I can think is, "aw, that's nice." And, as usual, it doesn't matter if any of this applies to college sports, because college sports are dumb. do you even know what you plan on saying when you start typing