Trophies News spotlights a legendary college football trophy
The Paul Bunyan football trophy has a colorful history dating back to 1953. This four-foot statue of legendary logger Paul Bunyan standing on a map of Michigan was first conceived that year.
The trophy’s origins rest with a rivalry. Despite playing the Spartans all but two years since 1910, Michigan had fought year after year to keep its intrastate rival out of the Big Ten. But in 1953, Michigan State was admitted to the conference.
About a month before that year’s matchup, Gov. G. Mennen Williams proposed the teams play for the Governor’s Trophy in honor of their first game as Big Ten opponents. He commissioned a Chicago jeweler to carve the new football trophy out of wood.
That idea thrilled the Spartans’ athletic department, but not the Wolverines’. Some worried it would reduce the excitement of playing for, another rivarly trophy – the Little Brown Jug.
Controversy continued heading into the 1954 game. After Michigan won 33-7 in Ann Arbor, it left the trophy on the field for half an hour, apparently not realizing they actually had to keep it.
Michigan State centrally featured the trophy in Jenison Field House, while Michigan kept it in the locker room. They said it had no room elsewhere. Even after winning the trophy the next year, the Wolverines did not engrave their winning scores. So intent to kindle the tradition, in 1956, the victorious Spartans did it for them.
In 1958, the teams tied. Michigan refused to take the trophy. The heavily favored Spartans were so embarrassed by the tie, they wouldn’t take it either (eventually they relented).
Today, the Paul Bunyan trophy represents a true rivalry – and the teams actually want to win it!
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