What do an axe, a bucket and a cannon have in common? Meet the rivalry trophies of college football

There's hardly a richer — or quirkier — tradition in college football than rivalry trophies, one of the few elements of the game that remains the same in the new era of revenue sharing and the transfer portal. From the small schools to the powerhouse programs, nothing captures a sports fan's attention quite like a traveling trophy.

“It’s a way for a community — certainly the students, alumni, fans and faculty, but even more casual fans — to get revved up for a football game,” said Christian Anderson, a University of South Carolina professor whose research focus is on the history of higher education. “There are a lot of people who may not pay attention the whole season, and then the rivalry game comes and they’re a passionate fan for one Saturday.”

Longtime members of the Big Ten boast perhaps the richest history of these one-of-a-kind prizes. The Little Brown Jug, which is neither little nor brown, dates to the Michigan-Minnesota game in 1903. Wolverines coach Fielding Yost, out of fear the Gophers might tamper with their water, had a student manager buy a jug for the team. After a brutal struggle ended in a tie as Minnesota fans stormed the field, the container was left behind. The Gophers formally returned it after the Wolverines won the next meeting in 1909.

Minnesota fared better at the beginning with Floyd of Rosedale, a 98-pound bronze pig named after the state's governor in 1935 who suggested the trophy to his Iowa counterpart as a way to deescalate tension between two fan bases with deep roots in farming.

Indiana will face Purdue on Friday for the Old Oaken Bucket, found in disrepair on a local farm in 1925 with the belief it might have been used by Confederate soldiers in the Civil War. Indiana and Michigan State have competed since 1950 for the Old Brass Spittoon, a relic from the trading post era purchased at an antique shop by an MSU student to add incentive to the game.

Illinois and Ohio State have played for a century for the Illibuck Trophy, now a wooden turtle after an ill-fated attempt to award the real thing — a 16-pound snapper — to a student society on the campus of the winning team. Michigan and Michigan State have fought since 1953 for annual ownership of the Paul Bunyan Trophy, a four-foot wooden statue of the mythical lumberjack donated by the state's governor to mark MSU's entry into the conference.

As football became the front-of-the-brochure image of a college campus, the power of visuals has helped make these trophies lasting legends.

“It’s a tangible representation that we beat our rivals,” Anderson said. “Maybe we only keep it for a year because it’s a traveling trophy, but next time we're going back to get it if we didn't win it.”

19th-century drinkware

The NCAA certified the Territorial Cup played for by Arizona and Arizona State as the oldest known rivalry trophy, awarded after their first meeting in 1899. But there's a gap in the history of the small, silver-plated pitcher. It was missing for decades until its rediscovery in a storage area of a church near the ASU campus in 1983. Traveling-trophy formality was finally reinstated in 2001.

From an earlier time

If there's one recurring theme among rivalry trophies, it is relics from the pre-industrial age. Nevada and UNLV play for the Fremont Cannon, a 545-pound replica of the cannon the explorer of the same name abandoned in a snowstorm during his trek through the state in 1844.

Notre Dame and USC have the Jewelled Shillelagh, a wooden symbol of a traditional Gaelic war club that was first presented in 1952. Oh, and there are all kinds of bells waiting to be rung by a winning team out there. Lots of bells.

Found in a hardware store

California and Stanford play for an axe, too, except theirs is just the head mounted on a plaque, an oft-stolen trophy annually awarded since 1933. Kentucky and Tennessee battle for a beer barrel.

What's for breakfast?

When Mississippi fans stormed Mississippi State's field after a Rebels win in 1926, MSU supporters balked and brawls broke out. To help restore dignity to the rivalry the following year, the student bodies from both schools introduced the Golden Egg, a gold-plated football mounted on a pedestal.

Fortunately, the egg never gets too close to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex in Texas, where SMU and TCU have played for the Iron Skillet since 1946. The rivals from the defunct Southwest Conference have met 104 times in 110 years, but no future games have been scheduled.

The Slab of Bacon is safely away from the skillet, too.

That was the first version of the Minnesota-Wisconsin hardware, a wooden slab that went missing in 1943 after the planned exchange following a Gophers victory never took place, for reasons that depend on which school is telling the story.

A summer storage cleanout project in Madison in 1994 turned up the trophy, which Wisconsin has since kept on display. Somehow, all the game scores through 1970 are inscribed on it even though it was supposedly unable to be found for all those years.

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