Trophy Games
Trophy games—annual games between school rivals—are a rich Big Ten tradition. The Golden Gopher football team battles in four trophy games each year.
Little Brown Jug
The Little Brown Jug: Minnesota vs. Michigan
Current owner: University of Minnesota
The story of “The Little Brown Jug,” neither little nor brown, began at the turn of the century. The fabled “point-a-minute” Michigan football squads coached by Fielding Yost were destroying everyone in the nation and had won 28 straight games heading into Minneapolis in 1903.
The pre-game revelry pulsed through the campus. Minnesota had one of its best teams in school history and expected to give Yost’s squad a run for their money. Before the game, students paraded across the field with various painted livestock, while fans filtered into the stadium from a constant stream of arriving streetcars. The 20,000 fans, positioned in bleachers as well as atop trees and telephone poles, remained civil until the Gophers scored a second-half touchdown that tied the score at 6-6. At this point, fans stormed the field in celebration, causing pandemonium so great that the game had to be called with two minutes remaining on the clock.
On the morning following the contest, Minnesota custodian Oscar Munson carried an earthenware water jug to the office of L. J. Cooke, head of the athletics department. Munson pronounced in a heavy Scandinavian accent, “Jost left his yug.” Still giddy from the tie, they decided to keep the prize and painted on its side “Michigan Jug - Captured by Oscar, October 31, 1903,” and the score, “Minnesota 6, Michigan 6.” The Minnesota score appeared comically “as big as a house,” dwarfing the Michigan score beside it. Yost sent a letter asking Minnesota to return the jug. Cooke wrote back, “If you want it, you’ll have to win it.”
The two teams didn’t play again until 1909. Michigan won the game that year, and Minnesota dutifully returned the jug. In 1910, Michigan left the conference, and Minnesota didn’t have a chance to win it back until 1919. That year the Gophers, led by their star Arnie Oss, stormed into Ann Arbor and pounded the Wolverines 34-7 on their own Ferry Field. When Minnesota asked for the symbolic trophy at the end of the game, their rivals couldn’t find it. But the Gopher players persisted, and Wolverine equipment man Henry Hatch came up with it after a short time, saying that he found it “overgrown behind a clump of shrubbery near the gym.” Later, Minnesota historians said, “…but most likely it was found in a trophy case inside the gymnasium, easily dusted off and proudly brought back to Minnesota.”
Cooke took out his paintbrush again to paint that year’s result. In the end, his two artistic attempts had taken up the whole surface of the five-gallon jug, so when Michigan took it back the next year, the two schools decided to give the entire jug a colorful gloss. Now, the results of 86 games — including two in one season (1926) are embossed on its sides: 63 won by Michigan, 22 by Minnesota, and 3 ties. 2005 marked the first time in over 25 years the Little Brown Jug came back to Minnesota. Due to the Big Ten’s unbalanced schedule, Minnesota and Michigan did not face each other in either 1999 or 2000, breaking a consecutive streak of annual contests that dated back to the 1929 season.
Cooke once mused on the strange power within the stoneware crock, “I sometimes think that the jug has been filled with spirits, not alcoholic but the disembodied spirits of the countless players who have fought for it on the gridiron...”
In many ways, the jug represents the history of college football. It overflows with historic battles for national and conference championships, and may indeed be filled with the spirits of gridiron men who went on to win Heisman Trophies and Hall of Fame honors. It is the most famous of all college rivalry trophies, and no other inanimate object comes close to the aura of tradition like the Little Brown Jug.
Floyd of Rosedale
Floyd of Rosedale: Minnesota vs. Iowa
Current owner: University of Iowa
The states of Minnesota and Iowa battle it out every year when their teams face each other in one of the most emotional college football rivalries in the country. The winner of the game earns the right to keep the bronze statue of a pig called “Floyd of Rosedale.”
The year was 1935, and emotions were running hot heading into the Minnesota-Iowa game. Bernie Bierman’s Gophers were 5-0, and Ossie Solem’s Hawkeyes were 4-0-1. Iowa had recently been reinstated to eligibility following a suspension for slush-fund violations, a suspension that had been ardently supported by a Minnesota representative. To make matters worse, Iowa fans still remembered the contest from the year before, when Minnesota players had roughed up Hawkeye star Ozzie Simmons so badly that he had to leave the game because of injuries.
The game in 1935 was at Iowa, and the host state had not forgotten either of the incidents. Iowa Governor Clyde Herring incited the fans and joined in the bitter feelings toward the state to the north and its football squad by saying, “If the officials stand for any rough tactics like Minnesota used last year, I’m sure the crowd won’t.”
Greatly alarmed, Minnesota’s Governor Floyd Olson tried to cool the hot heads of fans on both sides of the border with his telegrammed answer to Herring. “Minnesota folks are excited over your statement about Iowa crowds lynching the Minnesota football team. I have assured them you are law abiding gentlemen and are only trying to get our goat...I will bet you a Minnesota prize hog against an Iowa prize hog that Minnesota wins.”
The diplomatic tactic eased the tension, and the game was a hard-fought but cleanly played 13-6 Minnesota victory. More importantly, no mob of angry fans got involved in any post-game, extracurricular activity. The Golden Gophers brought home “Floyd of Rosedale,” an award-winning prize pig donated by Allen Loomis, the owner of Rosedale Farms near Fort Dodge, Iowa, and named after the Minnesota governor.
A few days later, Governor Herring collected Floyd and personally walked him into Governor Olson’s carpeted office. About the same time, news surfaced that an Iowa fan had sworn out a warrant charging Herring with gambling. Olson good-naturedly offered asylum, but Herring declined. “I might have to go home and write out a pardon for myself,” Herring joked.
Governor Olson later offered Floyd up as the grand prize in a state-wide essay-writing contest, which was won by 14-year old Robert Jones. Jones later sold the hog to the University. A year later, the University sold Floyd to J.B. Gjerdrum, a breeder who lived near Mabel, Minn., on the Iowa-Minnesota border, for “about $50” according to Gjerdrum. Sadly, in a death most unbefitting a figure of such stature, Floyd passed on to that great pigpen in the sky. As Gjerdrum noted, “We had him about a year. There was hog cholera around…One day he just leaned up against a straw pile and died.”
The spirit of good sportsmanship embodied by Floyd lives on in the form of a 15 1/2-inch high, 21-inch long bronze statue of the prize hog. The sculpture was commissioned by Governor Olson and created by Charles Brioschi, a St. Paul artist.
Every year, since 1935, these two border-state rivals have fought for the right to pen the bronze pig in their own trophy case. During that span, Minnesota has won Floyd 38 times, Iowa has won 31, and there have been two ties. From 1983 to 2000, Minnesota and Iowa saved each other for the most important and emotional season finale slot. Every college football season, Minnesota and Iowa fight for “Floyd of Rosedale,” a symbol of how interstate tension can be averted through athletic competition.
Paul Bunyan’s Axe
Paul Bunyan’s Axe: Minnesota vs. Wisconsin
Current owner: University of Wisconsin
At 115 games and counting, the series between Minnesota and Wisconsin ranks as the longest in Division 1-A football; and “Paul Bunyan’s Axe” has the history of one of college football’s fiercest rivalries emblazoned on its six-foot long handle. The first game in the series, a 63-0 Gopher victory in 1890, is printed on the handle near the axe’s head. The results of every successive game line the handle in red ink. There have been so many games that the scores scroll up and down the width of both sides of the handle, and school officials have now resorted to writing scores on the narrow edges of the six-foot shaft.
By 1930, “Paul Bunyan’s Axe” wasn’t even created, although the rivalry had already reached feverish levels. The 1906 game was canceled by President Theodore Roosevelt, who had decided to cool off heated college football rivalries, because of injuries and deaths on the field. In 1914, Minnesota faced the Badgers for the Gophers’ first Homecoming game; likewise, Wisconsin hosted Minnesota for the Badgers’ first in 1919. Between the years 1923 and 1925, the teams battled to three straight ties.
To symbolically capture the amazing atmosphere of the annual match-up, Dr. R. B. Fouch of Minneapolis fashioned a bacon slab out of black walnut to serve as the traveling trophy that he hoped would compare to the well-known “Little Brown Jug,” which Minnesota and Michigan played for every year. The “Slab of Bacon,” first played for in 1930, had a football carved on top inscribed with an “M” or “W”, depending on how you held it. The idea was that the winning team would “bring home the bacon.”
But in the early ’40s, the Slab of Bacon became the “Missing Slab of Bacon.” Peg Watrous, who was the president of Wisconsin women students at the time, relates that she and her counterpart from Minnesota were to have a symbolic exchange after the game, whereby the trophy would be awarded to the winning team. Minnesota won, but in characteristic fashion, a post-game melee broke out on the field, with students and spectators running crazy over the field. Watrous couldn’t find her counterpart and was left “holding the bacon,” as it were. “I have no memory of what happened after that…The whole thing was a dud, as I feared it would be,” Watrous remembered good-humoredly, “and someone in charge probably hid the bacon.”
But the two teams had to play for something, so in 1948 the Wisconsin W Club instituted “Paul Bunyan’s Axe” as a trophy more befitting the grand rivalry between the two schools.
The Slab of Bacon was back in the news in the summer of 1994, when the long-lost trophy was found after a Camp Randall Stadium storage room was cleaned out. Wisconsin officials estimated that it had been missing since 1945; yet the scores of every Wisconsin-Minnesota game from 1930 through 1970 were printed on the back of the slab. It is one of those Twilight Zonesque mysteries that remains unexplained and contributes to the legend of Minnesota’s and Wisconsin’s “Border Battle” rivalry.
Governor’s Victory Bell
Governor’s Victory Bell: Minnesota vs. Penn State
Current owner: Penn State
Like Floyd of Rosedale, Minnesota’s fourth and most recent traditional game trophy was founded by a pair of state governors.
Then-acting governor Mark Singel of Pennsylvania and former governor Arne Carlson of Minnesota established the Governor’s Victory Bell on Sept. 4, 1993, the date of the first Minnesota-Penn State game. The contest, which took place at Beaver Stadium on the Penn State campus, not only marked the first game between the two teams, but also signified the inaugural Big Ten game for the Nittany Lions.
“As the Nittany Lions’ initial conference opponent, Minnesota always will occupy a special place in Penn State football history, and we think it is appropriate to mark the occasion in this distinctive fashion,” said Singel in 1993. “Governor Robert Casey was an early supporter of Penn State’s move to the Big Ten Conference, and I know he looks forward to future conference games involving the Nittany Lions.”
“Big Ten athletics has been a tremendously positive experience in the life of our state,” said Carlson. “Minnesota’s matchup against Penn State is a historic welcome to a school that will further enrich that experience for all of us. This trophy marks a very special occasion and will allow us to remember it for years to come.”
An artist’s conception of the Governor’s Victory Bell was presented by Singel and Carlson before the kickoff of that 1993 game, which Penn State won 38-20. The design of the trophy is a brass bell bearing the medallion of the Big Ten Conference, suspended from a wooden frame. At the top of the frame is a plaque that features the state seals of Minnesota and Pennsylvania.
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