By Chris Marler
I love college football. Outside of my corgi, Pepper, and finding extra fries in the bottom of my Chick-Fil-A to go bag, there is nothing I love more than the four months we get every fall to watch the greatest sport on earth.
I love the pageantry, the traditions, the fight songs. But can we have an honest and real conversation about an unpopular opinion I’ve had for quite some time now?
Most of the college football rivalry trophies suck.
Looking at you Big Ten fans and programs. I mean seriously, what the hell was happening in the 1920’s that caused you guys up north to not only invent the participation trophy but invent the weirdest ones imaginable. There are 17 total trophy games in the Big Ten, and almost all of them are comically stupid.
An old oaken bucket for Purdue-Indiana? An old brass spittoon for Michigan State and Indiana? A wooden turtle? What kind of Antebellum Hobby Lobby did you find this stuff at? Almost every single “trophy” feels like a kid who woke up on the last day of school and realized his year-long science project was due in an hour.
Listen, if I wanted a parting gift that I hated but had to act polite about, I’d dig up my grandma and ask for another Chicken Soup for the Black Sheep of the family’s soul book that I got every Christmas. Purdue and Indiana have been playing for a bucket with a charm bracelet attached to it for 100 years now. Fun fact, the very first installment of that trophy game ended in a 0-0 tie.
Even the bucket didn’t want to go home with one of those god-awful programs.
And what is the deal with all the Paul Bunyan cosplay?! You have not one but two trophies themed around a fictional lumberjack who ate pancakes and dressed like he worked at a brewery that only served crappy IPAs and played 2011 Mumford and Sons songs?
It’s not just the Big Ten, either. There are weird trophies all across the country. We have oil cans, milk cans, iron skillets, a keg of nails, two wagon wheels, which, by the way, just like the song, has one legitimate version and one version that was ruined by two Group of Five schools in Ohio and that guy from Hootie and the Blowfish.
There are three battles for the bell, one battle for the belt, and a zillion different victory bells. Hell, Michigan St and Penn State play for a land grant trophy. And trust me, I want to make fun of two teams playing over paperwork as a trophy, but at least bronze tps reports are creative compared to some of the others.
If you think that’s stupid, Alabama and Auburn play for a trophy called the James E. Foy, V-Omicron Delta Kappa Sportsmanship Trophy. I fell asleep halfway through reading that travesty of a title, but woke up immediately reading the word “sportsmanship.”
Sportsmanship? In a rivalry game featuring two teams that had a rival fan commit bioterrorism on some front campus forestry like a decade ago? The same two teams who had a 41-year hiatus over sketchy officiating and player per diems leading to widespread postgame brawls and melees.
What are we even doing here? All I’m saying is I miss the days when two teams went out on the field without trying to win some trophy. They went out and played for the sacred things that really matter like their university, their pride and their opportunity to play in the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl sponsored by Prize Picks.
