When you do something good, you want to be rewarded for it. It's human nature, whether you're an overworked and underpaid public employee, or a grubby little kid who made it to the quarterfinals of your under-8 co-ed indoor soccer league playoffs. Or, I guess, a big time college football team that just beat a rival.
Workers get money, little kids get trophies, and college athletes that aren't allowed to be paid like workers get trophies too. But somewhere along the line, fate smiled upon the weary Big Ten college football player, and decided that if they must be compensated by trophy, they were gonna be compensated by some of the most insane trophies in the world.
I have an undying and unabashed love for the rivalry trophies of the Big Ten. The ones that are animal related are goofy, the ones that are Paul Bunyan related are pretty hilariously phallic (weird for things conceived when Freud was kicking around), and the ones that are ridiculous chunks of wood glued together are... well, they're ridiculous chinks of wood glued together. All of them equate to a glorious pastiche of straight up poor taste and an inherent weirdness that is somehow more Midwestern than anything else we could try to come up with.
They're awesome, and on the eve of Illibuck, I celebrate them.
Land of Lincoln Trophy- Northwestern/Illinois
The Land of Lincoln trophy is a bronze stovepipe hat, the favorite of Abraham Lincoln, and serves to commemorate Lincoln's favorite sport should he have lived long enough to see its invention.
It's a little bronze hat. That's it. But! It is significantly less offensive and NCAA attention-attracting than the original trophy, the Sweet Souix Tomahawk. That trophy was originally one of those tacky dime store wooden carved Indians, but was eventually stolen and replaced with a potentially deadly weapon. This will be a theme.
Illibuck- Ohio State/Illinois
My favorite thing about Illibuck is that at one point it was a live turtle. Two years later, it was dead. All of the technological prowess of two of the better public university institutions couldn't keep a turtle alive for two years.
There have been ten wooden Illibucks since then, and the sad thing is that with the rearranging of the Big Ten, Ohio State and Illinois will now only play each other once every four years or so. On the plus side, given the state of the Illinois football program, we'll get to keep the thing for a loooonnggg while.
The Purdue Cannon- Illinois/Purdue
Yes, people actually spit in thisAh yes, who can forget growing up with Keith Jackson's sonorous voice as he announced commencement of the most anticipated rivalry game in all of college football, nay, in all of sports! Illinois. Purdue. MAGIC!
In all seriousness, this is exactly the kind of thing that makes these trophies special. Two teams, with kind of okay history but not really enough at the time to warrant a trophy, say screw it and make one anyway. I respect that, but on the other hand, well...
They play for a wee cannon someone made about a hundred years ago.
Old Brass Spittoon- Indiana/Michigan State
Yessss, one of my favorites. Okay, so check this out:
In 1950, McDermott was the junior class president at Michigan State College and a favorite of Spartans football coach Clarence "Biggy" Munn.
The team had just scored a 36-33 win over Notre Dame to improve to 5-1 and rise to No. 13 in the national rankings.
"We expected a big letdown. Indiana was better at the time than they are now," McDermott recalled. "As president of the junior class, I had a little leverage. So our secretary, Virginia O'Brien, and I walked into this antique shop in Lansing looking for some sort of trophy to give to the winner. She wasn't wild about my choice, but I said the guys will love it."
Trophy in tow, McDermott contacted the student council at Indiana and received a telegram that read, "We, the students of Indiana University, hereby accept your challenge."
The next order of business was taking the spittoon to show to Munn. "He loved it. He showed it to the guys, got 'em hot and fired up. Ready to play."
Sparty can be motivated by literally anything.
Old Oaken Bucket- Indiana/Purdue
This is a weird one. Indiana and Purdue got together in 1925 (the same year Ohio State was contemplating making a live turtle a trophy and then eventually killing it) and decided that they needed a trophy for themselves. So they thought about it for a while, and decided on a bucket. A committee was formed to find an appropriate bucket, which was then garnished with some admittedly pretty cool metalwork.
But still. It took two giant alumnus groups to come up with this.
Floyd of Rosedale- Iowa/Minnesota
The full story of the lil' bronze piggy Floyd of Rosedale is a bit too long to recap here, but it's suffice to say that this is definitely the trophy that Bret Bielema bent over backwards to try and win on a consistent basis. Him being a literal pig farmer and all.
I will say that I'm impressed with the amount of subterfuge involved with the bragging rights over prize pig, but maybe once again I'm underestimating the Midwest. Plus I guess my own hometown of Middletown has a monument to a particular breed of pig so I don't really have that much room to talk.
The Heroes Trophy- Iowa/Nebraska
Horrible! I was really hoping for some kind of weird, extended joke about corn that I could make here, but nope, the Heroes Trophy is just a bland "football on top of a block of wood" deal that frankly disappoints me given the ridiculousness coming up next week. Frankly I was hoping for something more akin to those ridiculous cement corn statues here in Columbus.
Poorly done, guys. Bad.
So many trophies! We're not done yet, not by a longshot. Stay tuned next week when I tackle the eternal mystery that is the Land Grant Trophy, and find as many ways to use a jug as I possibly can.
