THE BOWL ELIGIBLE BLOG
College Football's Rivalry Trophies, Ranked by Weirdness
A live turtle, a 98-pound bronze pig, and a trophy born in a Twitter argument: college football's rivalry trophies, ranked by weirdness.
There are 42 rivalry trophies in our Hardware Store dataset, and the honest truth is that "weird" is the default setting. Schools play for jugs, buckets, bells, axes, a skillet, a spittoon, and at least two different wagon wheels. The ranking below is editorial — our opinion, argued about at length — but the facts behind every entry are not: who plays for each trophy, when it dates to, and who holds it now all come straight from the dataset, with holders current through the most recent meeting on or before December 31, 2025.
1. $5 Bits of Broken Chair Trophy (Minnesota vs. Nebraska)
The only trophy on this list born in a Twitter argument. In November 2014, Minnesota's mascot Goldy Gopher got into it with Faux Pelini, a parody account of Nebraska coach Bo Pelini, who proposed the terms: if we win you give me $5; if you win I get to smash a wooden chair over your back. Fans crowdsourced an actual trophy out of the joke, and the schools have played for it ever since. It is an unofficial trophy — no athletic department sanctioned its creation — which somehow makes it more official, not less. Minnesota holds it, having won the 2025 meeting. First awarded: 2014. A decade old, born online, and already load-bearing in two fan cultures.
2. Illibuck (Illinois vs. Ohio State)
The original Illibuck was a live turtle, chosen because a turtle's long life symbolized how long the rivalry was expected to last. The turtle died in 1926, one year after the trophy was first awarded, which is either a bad omen or a reasonable lifespan for a ceremonial turtle. Wooden replicas have been carved ever since, with the scores of each game inscribed on the shell. Ohio State holds the current turtle, from the 2025 game.
3. Old Brass Spittoon (Indiana vs. Michigan State)
In 1950, Michigan State's junior class president bought a spittoon from an East Lansing antique shop and offered it as a rivalry trophy, partly to guard against a letdown after a big win the week before. A note inside the spittoon claimed it came from an 1800s trading post. Nobody verified that. Nobody needed to. Indiana holds it after the 2025 game, and a used spittoon of unverifiable provenance remains, pound for pound, the least dignified object two universities have ever fought over. That is a compliment.
4. Telephone Trophy (Iowa State vs. Missouri)
During pregame field testing in 1959, Iowa State and Missouri discovered their coaches' sideline phones were cross-wired, so each staff could hear the other. The trophy commemorates the incident with, naturally, a telephone. The rivalry went dormant when Missouri left for the SEC, so the cross-wired phone has sat with Missouri since 2011, the last meeting in the data. It may hold the trophy forever, which feels thematically correct for a communications failure.
5. Floyd of Rosedale (Iowa vs. Minnesota)
After Iowa star Ozzie Simmons was roughed up in the 1934 game, Minnesota's governor bet Iowa's governor a prize hog on the 1935 rematch to cool tensions. Minnesota won 13–6, a real pig named Floyd was delivered from Rosedale Farms, and when Floyd died, the governor had a 98-pound bronze pig made so the bet could live forever. First awarded in 1935; Iowa holds Floyd after the 2025 game. A trophy that required a governor, a wager, a live animal, and a bronze foundry ranks exactly this high.
6. Stanford Axe (California vs. Stanford)
Stanford's yell leaders first swung the axe in 1899, using it to decapitate a straw man in Cal's colors. Cal students stole it; it spent 31 years in a Berkeley bank vault; Stanford's "Immortal 21" stole it back in 1930 using tear gas while posing as reporters. The schools finally agreed to just play for it in 1933. Stanford holds it after 2025. Most trophies have an origin story. This one has a crime timeline spanning three decades.
7. Bronze Boot (Colorado State vs. Wyoming)
The boot is not a sculpture of a boot. It is an actual combat boot, worn in Vietnam by Capt. Dan Romero, who taught military science at Colorado State and proposed bronzing one of his own battle-worn boots. ROTC detachments still run the game ball up the highway to the state line every year. Wyoming holds the boot after the 2025 game. It is the heaviest trophy on this list emotionally, and it is not close.
The honorable mentions
The Fremont Cannon for Nevada–UNLV is a replica mountain howitzer weighing roughly 545 pounds, billed by UNLV's first coach as the heaviest and most expensive trophy in the sport; UNLV holds it. The Golden Egg, played for by Ole Miss and Mississippi State since 1927, is a $250 gold-plated football that looks like an egg because footballs were rounder then — it was proposed to calm fans down after the 1926 game ended in a chair-swinging brawl; Ole Miss holds it. The Little Brown Jug, Michigan vs. Minnesota since 1909, started as a five-gallon water jug bought for 30 cents because Fielding Yost feared Minnesota would tamper with Michigan's water; Michigan holds it from 2024. And the Okefenokee Oar, Florida vs. Georgia, was carved from a tree roughly 1,000 years old pulled from the swamp on the state line. It is the second unofficial trophy in the dataset, and Georgia holds it after 2025.
The oldest of all 42, for the record: the Territorial Cup, Arizona vs. Arizona State, awarded to the 1899 territorial league champion, lost for some 80 years, rediscovered in a church basement in 1980, and later authenticated by the NCAA as the sport's oldest rivalry trophy. Arizona holds it.
Want to test whether you can name the matchup from the hardware alone? That is The Hardware Store: we show you the trophy's story with the schools scrubbed out, and you work out who plays for it. The spittoon gives nobody a free pass.