I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but it’s Rivalry Week in college football. It’s that time of the college football season when you can throw out the records. When legends are born. When memories are made. When coaches are bought out or “reassigned” for going to the Meineke Car Care Bowl every year but going 0-7 aginst your rival. When pranks get out of control. When couches and other private parts are burned. When destroying goalposts is a perfectly legitimate activity.
And when teams battle for some dumb-ass trinket.
Yes, state, border, town, or greater water basin wildlife region supremacy isn’t enough. You need a item of indiscriminate value to take back to your campus and parade around, dammit. A tangible piece of something to represent victory.
For example, the peace pipe that Toledo and Bowling Green award to the victor of the Battle of I-75. Because nothing says sporting victory like getting high!
Or how about USC-UCLA, who award the winner of their bitter Crosstown Rivalry the Victory Bell. Nothing sums up life as a collegian in Philadelphia better than that. Oh, wait they play in Los Angeles.
A “Border War” between Colorado State and Wyoming can only be symbolized by that venerable symbol of the American West, a Bronze Boot. Yep, and the player whose foot it actually fits gets to bang all the cheerleaders. Ah, fairy tale tradition.
Some of these rivalries and the trinkets they get are not nearly as colorful. For example, Georgia and Georgia Tech battle every year over the Governor’s Cup. What the players don’t know is that the current Governor’s chewing tobacco he spit out earlier that morning at the tailgate is in there.
Some of the best swag come from rivalries that happen earlier in the season. For example, Minnesota and Michigan battle for the Little Brown Jug. An ironically named jug, since it seems to be neither little nor brown. But the hooch inside is said to be quite sweet and intoxicating.
And there are just some of these things that may symbolize victory, but are really just nothing more than butt-ugly conversation pieces. I direct you to the Old Oaken Bucket, the prize that goes to the winner of the Indiana-Purdue battle at the end of the season. Who would want this? Mr. T. thinks it’s awfully gaudy. No wonder Indiana is a basketball hotbed!
Now look, I’m not one to mock people’s traditions. Silly things like exchanging bells and buckets and jugs is, at the heart of college football. Because really, even if your season’s a total bust, you have no hope for going to a bowl, and your team is an otherwise embarrassing blot of cretinous behavior, at least you have rivalry week. You beat them, you get your embarrassing trinket, and you players hold it over your head with pride. No dignity, but pride.
Happy Rivalry Week, college football fans!
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