Rivalries define college football.

Whether it’s a border standoff, an intrastate clash or an annual encounter between two powerhouses, it’s easy to love the schools that love to hate each other – and even easier to love the trophies each game awards.

For example: To the victor of the Michigan-Minnesota game goes “The Little Brown Jug”, which was developed in 1903 after Michigan traveled to Minnesota riding a 28-game winning streak.

Suspicious of the drinking water his players would receive during the game, Michigan coach Fielding Yost had a manager buy a five-gallon water jug at a local store.

The game ended in a 6-6 tie, and in a hurry to leave – due in part to their embarrassment in Minnesota’s moral victory – Michigan left the jug behind.

When a Minnesota equipment manager brought the jug to athletic director L.J. Cooke in the morning, Cooke chose to keep it. And when Yost later sent a letter requesting the return of the jug, he was met with the response, “If you want it, you’ll have to win it.”

Schools all over the country have similar stories.

Take, for instance, the story of “The Stanford Axe.”

On April 15, 1899, the Stanford yell squad decided it would be a good idea to have something different to cheer their team on to victory.

The squad brought a 10-pound lumberman’s ax out onto the field before a baseball game against California and shouted, “Right in the neck. Right in the neck.”

Angry with the cheer, a group of California students caused a riot, stole the ax and then led the police in a chase through the streets of San Francisco.

Held in safe keeping for over 30 years, the ax resurfaced when a group of Stanford students, who called themselves the “Immortal Twenty-One,” stole it back.

Eventually the schools’ presidents decided the ax should be offered up as an annual football trophy, and thus began the tradition of the California-Stanford football game.

If you’re looking for a story closer to home, there’s always the Missouri-Kansas tale – or rather the argument.

The two teams can’t even agree on the name of the trophy the winner of the game receives. While Missouri calls it the Indian War Drum, Kansas counters with the Marching Band Drum.

The big controversy in the game should center around the fact that there has to be a winner between the two lackluster Big 12 teams. In this case, they should just call it a draw.

Just this last weekend, Iowa State won the Cy-Hawk Trophy by beating Iowa. The trophy, which was first awarded in 1977 after the Des Moines Athletic Club donated a football trophy to be awarded to the winner of the annual clash, features a bronze ballcarrier in a classic pose as he runs upfield unaware of the giant football that looms in front of him.

Although not particularly attractive, the trophy is special. It not only serves as a symbol for the game most of the state watches, but it tells the story of each Iowa-Iowa State game ever played – much like all the other trophies awarded.

Of course, some of the greatest rivalries are played for one reason only – pride.

Army-Navy, Harvard-Yale and Michigan-Ohio State – all distinguished college football games – are played only for bragging rights.

Trophies or pride, it really doesn’t matter. As long as rivals keep playing, the games will continue to take center stage for coaches, players and fans.

That fact may have been best echoed by a Washington State lineman before his team took on rival Washington for the Apple Cup in 1984.

“There are four important stages in your life,” he said. “You’re born, you play the Huskies, you get married and you die.”

Emily Arthur

is a junior in journalism and

mass communication from Clark, S.D. She is the sports editor of the Daily.