Could a traveling trophy help us snare a bowl bid?
By Jay Cridlin
Editor in Chief

Once again, we have come to the end of the proverbial road of another football season, and once again, the university is forced to sit out in the proverbial truck, listening to bowl games on the proverbial radio, desperately trying to think of ways to extend this proverbial metaphor.

This year, though, in a shocking twist of tradition, it’s actually not the fault of the players and coaches. The Demon Deacons finished with a bowl-eligible record of 6-5, yet still it appears unlikely they’ll be invited to even the most unsavory of bowl games, bowls with names like the Beet Bowl or the Sunshine Bowl presented by Dow Chemical Company.

It’s just not fair. Just because we’re not customarily a “football powerhouse,” or we don’t always “score as many points as the other team,” why should we be passed over like day-old crullers when bowl invitations are handed out?

I think I have an idea. We need a traveling trophy.

Many of you college football fans probably know that a number of rival teams have a traveling trophy that is awarded to the winner of each year’s game, such as the Washington-Washington State Apple Cup, the Indiana-Purdue Old Oaken Bucket and the Minnesota-Michigan Little Brown Jug.

Following these games, the winning team generally hops around jubilantly on the field hoisting the trophy as if it were a semaphore flag, and then takes it back to their campus, where students gaze longingly at it until next year’s matchup.

The last couple of weeks have been rife with these rivalry games, which only further grates my cheese. The university needs a game like this in order to solidify itself as a school with a football tradition, and there’s only one way to do that: get a traveling trophy.

A trophy automatically lends credence to your program. Smart schools have several of them. Miami and Florida have one (they exchange the Seminole War Canoe), and those two schools are likely headed for the national championship game.

In terms of sheer trophy-hoarding, no school can match Minnesota, which, in addition to the Little Brown Jug tilt with Michigan, has trophy games with Penn State (the Governor’s Victory Bell), Wisconsin (Paul Bunyan’s Axe) and Iowa (Floyd of Rosedale).
Those last two deserve an explanation. Paul Bunyan’s Axe is — you guessed it — a giant axe. When Minnesota beat Wisconsin last weekend in major college football’s oldest rivalry, the players sprinted to Wisconsin’s sidelines and triumphantly snatched the axe for themselves. I ask you: who wouldn’t want to see a group of large sweating men running around with an oversized axe?

Floyd of Rosedale is a pig. A bronzed statue of a pig, actually, but what truly matters is that at one time the Minnesota-Iowa winner did receive an actual pig. What each school did with the pig is a mystery, but I do think this option is worth pursuing. I’ve always said that if there’s one thing we need more of at this university, it’s cloven-hoofed livestock.

Traveling trophies can be more than just hogs and wagon wheels, though. The University of Kentucky used to have two great trophies: the Beer Barrel, awarded to the winner of the Kentucky-Tennessee game, and the Bourbon Barrel, given to the Kentucky-Indiana victor.

These trophies didn’t speak highly of Kentuckians’ blood-alcohol content, but I do give them credit for stopping short of creating a trophy featuring a man huffing paint thinner.
However, Kentucky’s neighbor to the north, Ohio, may still have some explaining to do.
For many years, the winner of the Toledo-Bowling Green contest received, ahem, a six-foot wooden pipe.

Some schools’ trophies are ridiculously extravagant. Nevada and UNLV battle for the Fremont Cannon, a $10,000 replica of a frontier gun from the 1840’s. Virginia Tech and Virginia Military Institute used to fight over the 22-foot Chamber of Commerce Trophy. For many years, the winner of the Middle Tennessee State-Tennessee Tech contest even displayed a totem pole on campus for the next year.

Now, I’m not saying we need something as fancy as a totem pole or a pig, but we do need some sort of trophy rivalry in place. So after careful consideration of traveling-trophy traditions already in place, I am prepared to offer a proposal.

Before each year’s Appalachian State game, the mascot of the previous year’s winning team will march out to midfield carrying: the Old Mahogany Yak Yoke.

The Yak Yoke will be a beautiful farm implement-style trophy steeped in tradition; the score of every Wake Forest-Appalachian State game in history will be engraved on the handles. In fact, enough scores will be conjured up and added so that it will appear the university and Appalachian State have played each year since — why not? —1883.

The team that possesses the Yak Yoke will be granted the esteemed honor of festooning the trophy with ribbons and bows of their school’s colors. There will also be a space on the Yak Yoke where the winning school’s drum major may paint the other school’s logo, crossed out by a snazzy Ghostbusters-style red circle and slash.

After each game, the winning team will hoist the Yak Yoke high into the air and haul it to their campus, where it would be displayed in a place of honor. Here, the Old Mahogany Yak Yoke would be displayed in the lobby of the Miller Center. On Appalachian State’s campus, it would be nailed above the door of the school’s most prominent henhouse.

OK, that last remark was uncalled for. But rivalries and traveling trophies are about fighting words and boiling blood and getting the other team’s goat, aren’t they?

I think a trophy will help us secure a bowl bid. The Fructose Bowl may snort at a 6-5 team, but they’ll have to look twice at a 6-5 team with an Old Mahogany Yak Yoke.

What do you say? Are you with me?

You’re right. Let’s just go kidnap Floyd of Rosedale.