The best teams are often the ones that are most disliked, and that’s something the Crimson is quickly starting to learn this year.

In a ridiculous column written in the Columbia Spectator this week, one writer urged readers to “hate” Tommy Amaker, comparing him—one of the most genuinely kind people I’ve encountered—to sports figures such as O.J. Simpson.

Clearly upset about being denied an interview with Amaker, the writer resorts to claiming that the coach has had a journey to “scandaltown.” His source, of course, is the 2008 New York Times article that reported Amaker guilty of NCAA recruiting violations; the writer, fittingly, decides not to mention that the coach was later cleared of any serious wrongdoing by the NCAA and found merely to have committed an “unintentional secondary violation.”

The writer then encourages Columbia’s athletic department to promote the idea of a Columbia-Harvard rivalry—because as every sports fan knows, all true rivalries start with people working for the team telling their fans to make it a rivalry.

Here’s the problem, Columbia: rivalries have to go both ways, but you just don’t matter enough to have a rivalry with.

Just look at your sports culture: Your team color is baby blue. Your students need to ride the subway across the city just to go to your football games. Speaking of football, your band received national media attention for making fun of its own team, which finished a pathetic 1-9. That’s almost as bad as you did in men’s hockey and men’s lacrosse. Oh wait, that’s not true, because you don’t even have teams in those sports. There are like seven fans on your entire campus, the majority of whom apparently spend their time debating which fictional villain the opponent’s coach is most similar to.

So sorry, Columbia, find someone else to hate. Since you love superheroes so much, perhaps try Underdog. Because that’s what you always will be.

Pick: Harvard 76, Columbia 59

CORNELL AT DARTMOUTH

Big things are supposed to be good at basketball; the Big Red and Big Green are not. In fact, Cornell’s not very big at all; it’s two leading rebounders are the 6’7” Shonn Miller and 6’0” Chris Wrobleswki.

The squad badly lacks frontcourt depth, and that should allow Gabas Maldunas and company to give the Big Red some trouble in the historic “voluminous pigments” rivalry.

I could definitely see Dartmouth making a run at an upset here—they’re due for one sometime soon, and this is the type of game where Cornell loves to play down to its opponents. But I think it’s a bit too early for the Big Green’s annual one conference win of the year.

Pick: Cornell 64, Dartmouth 60

PRINCETON AT YALE

After last week’s embarrassment, it’s clear that Yale is much further from competing for a championship than we thought. That’s largely because they have no point guard after losing Porter Braswell to graduation. I’m not sure how they’ve been so successful without one, but the Bulldog offense was a mess Friday night.