“little brother”
The junior party in a rivalry, by the senior party's account.
Popularised in college football by an in-state rivalry press conference; now used everywhere.
How often it gets said
Daily mentions across the whole conversation corpus, smoothed over 7 days. A break in the line is a stretch where the word fell below the reporting floor — not a stretch where nobody said it.
Measured on 59 of the window’s 84 days.
- 1Thu Sep 10
- 2Sun Oct 4
- 3Sun Oct 18
A day is attributed to a program only when that program held at least 1.75× the next program’s mentions, from 5+ separate posts. The game shown is that program’s result within a day of the peak. A day with no program named was a day nobody owned.
Who’s saying it
Share of the posts, articles and transcripts in the window that used the word, by kind of source. Counted per document, not per mention, so one long transcript that says it twenty times is one voice, not twenty.
- Reddit 78%
- YouTube 10%
- beat writers and press 8%
- podcasts and radio 2%
- message boards 1%
What it sounds like
Real posts from the corpus, quoted verbatim. The community is shown; the username never is.
“Saying they are our rivals is not understanding the relationship. They are our little brother. They consider us their rivals and this game is their Super Bowl.”
“Is this a joke? It’s NOT a bigger rivalry than Michigan vs Little Brother. Sure this weeks game with Utah and BYU is a marquee matchup but how many times was it worth a damn on the national level in the last 100 years.”
Who it gets said about
2026 season, FBS programs. These are mentions that name a program — from rival fans and national media as readily as from their own people — so this is what the sport says about a program, not what that program’s fans say.
Too few programs reached the 25-mention floor for this word to rank them fairly — a leaderboard needs at least 8 qualifying programs. The word may well separate the sport sharply; there just isn’t enough of it per program yet.