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 Gopher Traditions
Welcome to your online guide to Gopher gamedays at TCF Bank Stadium.
Minnesota football is steeped in tradition. From its first Big Ten title in 1900, accomplishments that include six National Championships, 18 Big Ten Championships and 13 bowl games have instilled a great sense of pride in both fans and alumni.
Golden Gopher football also enjoys several traditions that are unique to Minnesota, including competing in four rivalry trophy games. The Minnesota vs. Wisconsin rivalry is the most-played in all of college football with the two teams battling annual for Paul Bunyan’s Axe. Minnesota also plays prestigious trophy games vs. Michigan (Little Brown Jug), Iowa (Floyd of Rosedale) and Penn State (Governor’s Victory Bell).
Trophy Games
From its first Big Ten title in 1900 to its impending move into TCF Bank Stadium, Minnesota football has instilled a great sense of pride in its fans, alumni, and followers. But nothing quite captures a Gopher fan’s attention like these trophy games—each one a rivalry with a unique story and a fierce history.
The Minnesota-Wisconsin rivalry, for instance, is one of the most prestigious and anticipated series in the history of athletics. It’s the most-played rivalry in college football history, and the annual winner takes home Paul Bunyan’s Axe. Read about its inception and history, as well as that of the three others, below.
Wisconsin | Michigan | Iowa | Penn State
PAUL BUNYAN’S AXE
Minnesota vs. Wisconsin
At 118 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 postgame 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 annual battles have survived so long that in the ’60s the teams started to print the games’ final scores smaller and smaller, scrunching the letters in order to avoid reaching the end of the axe’s shaft. But the series continued to roll, and the last game to be painted on the broad face of the handle was in 1980. The 26 subsequent games appear on the narrow side of the handle.
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 1930-70 were printed on the back of the slab. It is one of those Twilight Zone-esque mysteries that remains unexplained, and contributes to the legend of Minnesota’s and Wisconsin’s "Border Battle" rivalry.
LITTLE BROWN JUG
Minnesota vs. Michigan
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 pregame 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 paint brush 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 on its sides: 65 won by Michigan, 22 by Minnesota, and three ties. 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.
After a 20-year absence, Minnesota returned the jug to its original home with a last-second victory over Michigan in 2005 in Ann Arbor. Following a 61-yard run by Gary Russell with just over a minute remaining, Jason Giannini hit a 30-yard field goal as time expired, giving the Gophers the 23-20 victory. In jubilation of their first win over the Wolverines since 1986, the Gopher players stormed the Michigan sideline to secure the prodigious prize.
Cooke once mused on the strange power within the stonewear 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
Minnesota vs. Iowa
The states of Minnesota and Iowa battle it out every year in college football, when their teams face each other in one of the most emotional 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 postgame, extracurricular activity. The Golden Gophers brought home "Floyd of Rosedale," an award-winning prize pig which had been 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 U of M. 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 32, 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.
GOVERNOR’S VICTORY BELL
Minnesota vs. 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 artists’ conception of the Governor’s Victory Bell was presented by Singel and Carlson prior to 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 which features the state seals of Minnesota and Pennsylvania, along with the following inscription:
Governor’s Victory Bell
Presented annually to the winner of the Penn State-Minnesota football game
Established: September 4, 1993
Governor Robert Casey, Pennsylvania
Governor Arne Carlson, Minnesota
At the bottom of the base, the Minnesota and Penn State athletics logos appear, along with individual brass plates for inscription of the scores of the games between the two teams.
After a two year hiatus between 1995-96, the battle for the Governor’s Victory Bell returned in 1997 when Penn State earned a hard-fought 16-15 victory at Beaver Stadium. The 1998 game returned to the Metrodome for only the second time in the short history of the Bell, where the Nittany Lions earned a 27-17 win. Minnesota took the Victory Bell home for the first time in 1999 when the Golden Gophers scored a historic 24-23 upset over the second-ranked Nittany Lions at Beaver Stadium. In 2000, the Golden Gophers were again victorious, winning 25-16 at the Metrodome.
The Nittany Lions and Golden Gophers didn’t meet in 2001 and 2002, and when the series renewed in 2003, the Gophers earned the right to keep the Bell with a 20-14 win in Happy Valley. Penn State claimed the bell for the first time in six years with their 44-14 win over Minnesota in 2005 and retained it with a 28-27 overtime win over the Gophers in 2007 at the Metrodome. The two teams will not face each other again until 2009.
The addition of the Governor’s Victory Bell to the Golden Gophers’ list of traditional trophy games means that Minnesota now has four active "trophy" rivalries on its schedule, more than any other college football program in the country.
Maroon & Gold
In 1880, the University of Minnesota was preparing for spring graduation. For the previous 29 years, different graduation colors were used every ceremony. In the spring of 1880, President Folwell began a tradition of common school colors at the University. He asked an English instructor, Mrs. Augusta Smith, to select proper colors to use for graduation ribbons and other occasions. She chose maroon and gold, which made a favorable impression on the students and faculty in 1880. As the years passed and without any kind of formal action, maroon and gold became the official school colors.
The Gopher Nickname
The Gopher mascot is a tradition as old as the state. Minnesota was tabbed the “Gopher State” in 1857 after a satirizing cartoon, depicting nine Gophers with the heads of local politicians pulling a locomotive, was published. The story was over legislative action for a $5 million railroad proposal in western Minnesota. Later, the University picked up the nickname.
The “Golden” Gophers
The “Golden” adjective has not always been a part of the Gopher nickname. During the 1930s, the Gophers wore gold jerseys and pants. Legendary KSTP-AM radio announcer Halsey Hall coined the term “Golden Gophers” in reference to the team’s all-gold attire on the field. From 1932-41, Minnesota compiled an impressive record, losing only 12 games in the 10-year span and winning seven Big Ten titles and five national championships — a true “golden” decade of Gopher football.
Ski-U-Mah
This famous Minnesota phrase, pronounced SKY-YOU-MAH, is more than 115 years old. In 1884, two Minnesota rugby players, John W. Adams and Win Sargent, tried to think of a fitting team yell. They used the word “Ski”, a Sioux battle cry meaning victory, and combined it with “U-Mah” (representing the University of Minnesota and rhyming with “rah-rah-rah”) to create a team cheer. The phrase stuck and was incorporated into both official school songs, “Hail Minnesota” and more commonly in the “Minnesota Rouser.”
Cheerleading at Minnesota
One of the most visible traditions in sports was born more than 100 years ago at the University of Minnesota. In the fall of 1898, student Johnny Campbell offered to lead organized cheers at football games. This offer came after three straight losses, and a subsequent editorial in the school paper that said, “Any plan that would stir up enthusiasm for athletics would be helpful.” Campbell had a plan, and he began to lead organized cheers at the home game against Northwestern. Minnesota won 17-6, and much of the credit went to Campbell and his “yell leaders.” At that late-season game, the tradition of cheerleading was born.
The Minnesota Rouser
The “Minnesota Rouser” is one of two official school songs at the University of Minnesota. It was written in 1909 by Floyd M. Hutsell in response to a contest sponsored by the Minneapolis Tribune. The contest was judged by University President Cyrus Northrop and Governor A.O. Eberhart, with the winner receiving $100. The rouser is sung at Gopher sporting events, along with the other official University song, “Hail Minnesota.”
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