It’s been 10 years since the last time the Michigan football team was forced to part with the Little Brown Jug. In 2014, Minnesota marched into Ann Arbor and defeated the Wolverines, 30-14, taking the Jug back to Minneapolis. The very next year, Michigan reclaimed the Jug and brought it back to Ann Arbor, where it has remained since, sitting among gleaming Big Ten Championship trophies and now the crown jewel: the National Championship trophy.
The Michigan-Minnesota rivalry is one of the oldest in college football, even though nowadays the Golden Gophers wouldn’t likely come up in a conversation of the Wolverines’ biggest rivals. The matchup has been fairly one-sided with Michigan claiming a 77-25-3 record since the teams’ first meeting in 1892. Now, with the Big Ten’s expansion and realignment, the rivalry matchup will occur even less frequently.
But just because the rivalry has lost some of its luster doesn’t mean that the programs no longer care about the Jug.
“We have the Brown Jug here on campus, so obviously it’s a big deal,” senior center Dominick Giudice said Tuesday. “We have talked about it, and it’s kind of crazy, the whole background story of how it came to be.”
The oldest trophy in FBS college football history does indeed have a crazy backstory. In 1903, Fielding Yost was in his third year as the Wolverines’ football coach. Approaching the game against Minnesota, Yost had 29 straight wins under his belt. He was off to a dominant start to the 1903 season as well, his squad having yet to allow a single point through the first seven games.
The Gophers were also undefeated, hoping to best the Michigan powerhouse and become “Champions of the West.” The game was close and low scoring, but finally, the Wolverines broke through in the second half, taking a 6-0 lead. Minnesota battled until the very end, though, coming back to tie the game 6-6 in the waning minutes. Gopher fans rushed the field in celebration, causing the game to be called early and end in a tie.
After the chaos settled and Michigan returned to Ann Arbor, Oscar Munson, a Minnesota equipment manager, found a five-gallon, Red Wing water jug that Yost had purchased from a local store before the game and left behind. Munson brought the jug to his athletic director, L.J. Cooke, and the two decided to commemorate the game by decorating the jug. They painted the words “Michigan Jug Captured by Oscar, October 31, 1903” and the score — with the Gophers’ “6” noticeably larger than the Wolverines’ “6.”
The two teams didn’t play each other again until 1909, and it was then that Cooke suggested to Yost that their teams play for the Jug. Yost agreed, and after Michigan won 15-6, it returned home with the Little Brown Jug — and the tradition was born.
Over the years, the Jug has spent the majority of its time in Ann Arbor. Since 1968 — the year before Bo Schembechler arrived in Ann Arbor — Minnesota has only taken home the Jug four times. But before then, the rivalry was as robust as ever. From 1934 to 1942, the Gophers won nine straight contests. They won another six in the 1960s right before the Schembechler era and current period of Wolverine dominance in the rivalry.
For the last 10 years, though, the Jug has resided in Michigan’s locker room, and this year’s Wolverines want to keep it that way.
“We talk about the Jug since the summertime,” sophomore receiver Fredrick Moore said Tuesday. “So we’re well prepared, and we really just have to go execute and play.”
Despite recent one-sided dominance, with a trophy on the line, both teams consider Saturday a big game. Although the fierceness of the rivalry has diminished over time, the Little Brown Jug remains a reminder of both programs’ illustrious pasts. And on Saturday, Michigan and Minnesota will battle for the right to hoist the Jug and make it part of their respective futures.
The post The Little Brown Jug: a lasting symbol of a forgotten rivalry appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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