Paul Bunyan's Axe
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| Wisconsin (32) | Minnesota (24) |
|---|---|
| 1950 1951 1954 1957 1958 1959 1961 1962 1964 1966 1970 1974 1976 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1988 1991 1992 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2002 2004 2005 2006 |
1948 1949 1955 1960 1963 1965 1967 1968 1969 1971 1972 1973 1975 1977 1984 1985 1986 1987 1989 1990 1993 1994 2001 2003 |
| Ties (3) | |
| 1952 1953 1956 | |
Paul Bunyan's Axe is a traveling trophy, (not to be confused with the Paul Bunyan Trophy) named after the mythical giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan, passed between the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers and University of Wisconsin-Madison Badgers football teams, given annually to the winning team immediately upon the conclusion of the game. It is a symbol of one of the most heated rivalries in college football and the oldest and most-played rivalry in Division I-A football, with 116 editions dating back to 1890. The Golden Gophers lead the all-time series, 59-49-8.
Game results are printed in red ink on the axe's handle, beginning with a 63-0 Gopher victory in 1890 inscribed near the head. There have been so many games that the scores scroll up and down the width of both sides of the handle, and school officials have now resorted to writing scores on the narrow edges of the six-foot shaft. The 1906 game was canceled by President Theodore Roosevelt, who had decided to cool off heated college football rivalries, because of injuries and deaths on the field. In 1914, Minnesota faced the Badgers for the Gophers’ first Homecoming game; likewise, Wisconsin hosted Minnesota for the Badgers’ first in 1919. Between the years 1923 and 1925, the teams battled to three straight ties.
To reward the winner of the annual match-up, Dr. R.B. Fouch of Minneapolis fashioned a bacon slab out of black walnut to serve as the traveling trophy that he hoped would compare to the well-known Little Brown Jug, which Minnesota and Michigan play for every year. The Slab of Bacon, first played for in 1930, had a football carved on top inscribed with an "M" or "W", depending on how you held it. The idea was that the winning team would "bring home the bacon."
In the early ’40s, the Slab of Bacon went missing. Peg Watrous, who was the president of Wisconsin women students at the time, relates that she and her counterpart from Minnesota were to have a symbolic exchange after the game, whereby the trophy would be awarded to the winning team. Minnesota won, but in characteristic fashion, a postgame melee broke out on the field, with students and spectators running crazy over the field. Watrous couldn’t find her counterpart, and was left "holding the bacon," so to speak. "I have no memory of what happened after that...The whole thing was a dud, as I feared it would be," Watrous remembered good-humoredly, "and someone in charge probably hid the bacon."
But the two teams had to play for something, so in 1948 the Wisconsin W Club instituted "Paul Bunyan’s Axe" as a trophy more befitting the grand rivalry between the two schools. The annual battles have survived so long that in the ’60s the teams started to print the games’ final scores smaller and smaller, scrunching the letters in order to avoid reaching the end of the axe’s shaft. But the series continued to roll, and the last game to be painted on the broad face of the handle was in 1980. The 25 subsequent games appear on the narrow side of the handle.
The Slab of Bacon was back in the news in the summer of 1994, when the long-lost trophy was found after a Camp Randall Stadium storage room was cleaned out. Wisconsin officials estimated that it had been missing since 1945; yet the scores of every Wisconsin-Minnesota game from 1930-70 were printed on the back of the slab.
Recent games of interest include:
- 1993, in which Minnesota handed then-#15 Wisconsin what would be its only loss of the season en route to a Rose Bowl victory and #6 final ranking[1].
- 2005, which pitted #22 Wisconsin against #23 Minnesota at the Metrodome. Minnesota, powered by 258 rushing yards from Laurence Maroney, held a 34-24 lead with 3:27 to go but lost after Wisconsin executed a shocking comeback. Quarterback John Stocco first drove the Badgers 71 yards for a touchdown to bring the score to 34-31 and the Badger defense then forced the Gophers to go three-and-out and punt with 35 seconds remaining. Jonathan Casillas blocked the punt and Ben Strickland fell on the ball just before it skittered out of the back of the endzone for the game-winning score.[2]
In the most recent iteration, the Badgers defeated the Gophers 48-12 at Camp Randall Stadium in 2006 to defend the axe.
[edit] See also
- Little Brown Jug (Michigan vs Minnesota)
- Floyd of Rosedale (Iowa vs Minnesota)
- Governor's Victory Bell (Minnesota vs Penn State)
- Heartland Trophy (Iowa vs Wisconsin)
- Paul Bunyan Trophy (Michigan vs Michigan State)
- Slab of Bacon (Wisconsin vs Minnesota, predecessor to Paul Bunyon's Axe, 1930-1948)
[edit] References
- Paul Bunyan's Axe - Minnesota vs. Wisconsin. Gophersports.com. Accessed June 9, 2006.
