I used to love the last week of college football, when there was only the ABC broadcast.
It's been at least 20 years or so since the "rivalry game" day was bifurcated into two weekends. That's when I first noticed it anyway. And I wondered whether it was always that way and maybe I just assumed it had changed. USC Notre Dame has always alternated --Notre Dame comes out here late in the season -often on Thanksgiving weekend and we go out there early in the season. They want to escape the snow and we want no part of it. We often then played UCLA on the first weekend of December...when I noticed Cal _Stanford and other rivalry games had been played the prior weekend
Conference realignment, the rise of conference championship games and creating a special week for Army-Navy definitely changed things even more though.
I don't like the kids playing on my lawn either.