Any good rivalry game needs to be a contest. You want it to be a fair fight, a matchup that either team could win in any given year regardless of its record coming in or the way it’s played so far.

There’s a reason we don’t see Michigan play a D-III team for its rivalry game. No one wants to see Michael Jackson and Carlton Banks from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” compete in a dance-off. It would be totally lopsided, like watching 2000 Tiger Woods play golf against 2011 Tiger Woods.

Sure, there are a few exceptions. Die-hard college football fans call Notre Dame-Navy a rivalry even though the Midshipmen basically got handled every time until very recently. Chipotle always beats Qdoba in every measurable burrito metric, but we still like to compare them side-by-side.

But generally, that’s uninteresting.

In the Ivy League, an eight-team conference, each squad is a foe of the other seven. This week especially, it features some of the league’s longest-running games, including a few that date back to the 19th century.

Some of these games feature two teams with strong records, and we can expect a contest.

In others, you just have to ask: why are these rivalry games again?

Harvard faces off against Princeton, but this head-to-head matchup that dates back to 1877 hasn’t been much of a contest since the Clinton administration. The Crimson has only lost to the Tigers twice since 1996.

Don’t count on that changing too much this year. Harvard sits on a 4-1 record at the halfway point of the season. Princeton also has a win this year, beating Columbia, which is a little bit like saying that the DMV beat the TSA in a customer service evaluation.

There are still some compelling games to be played on Saturday. Yale faces Penn, and the two, along with Harvard and perhaps Brown, are the clear title contenders this season.

But the rest of the games may not be too tight. Even the Columbia-Dartmouth matchup, one that features two struggling teams, shouldn’t be much of a contest, despite their similar records.

Of course, by establishing that this week’s games are clear-cut, I set myself up for embarrassment when I inevitably butcher a few picks.

YALE (3-2, 2-0 Ivy) at PENN (3-2, 2-0)

In a week that looks filled with mismatches, this will clearly be the best Ivy League game. It’s the only matchup in the Ancient Eight that features two winning teams.

Though Yale is still undefeated in league play, its loss last week to Lafayette shows that the Bulldogs are definitely vulnerable. When Harvard played the Leopards three weeks ago, Lafayette looked entirely listless and was held to just three points.