College Football Trophy Games
November 30, 2001
One of the interesting aspects of this part of the season is all the trophy games being played. You have teams battling for "The Old Oaken Bucket" and "Floyd of Rosedale" (I thought coach Carr was from Detroit), not to mention the famous Minnesota/Wisconsin contest for "Paul Bunyan's Ass".
Last weekend featured some of those rivalry games, highlighted by the Stanford vs. Notre Dame matchup, also known as the "Battle for the #2 Pencil" due to both schools' frequent triple-digit SAT scores.
The stories behind these trophies are often more fascinating than the games themselves.
Army and Navy never had a trophy for their game until recently. Former Navy great Roger Staubach went into business with some partners in Columbia. No, Roger wasn't the Cowboy who got caught carting around that wacky tobacky and nose candy, that was Nate Newton. And Michael Irvin. And Bob Hayes. And "Neon Leon" Lett.
Anyway, Staubach started buying coffee from Columbia and opened up his own coffee shop in Dallas. Pretty soon he started selling franchises, but he soon learned that nobody in Washington would buy "Staubach's" coffee (I don't know what UW fans have against a former Navy quarterback). So he renamed his store, and Army plays Navy every year for the Starbucks Trophy.
Another rivalry that languished for years without a trophy was the Southern Cal vs. UCLA matchup. Fortunately, 3M came through with a trophy for what is often referred to as the "Cheerleader Bowl", and now the winner of the Silicone Valley Classic receives a bust.
My favorite trophy story comes from the deep South. The inventor of the "iron lung", Philip Drinker, was a graduate of Auburn University. During his research on dysentery, he came up with a similar life-saving device for the digestive tract. The device never quite "panned" out, so, having nowhere to put it, he donated the prototype to his alma mater. That's why, every year, Alabama and Auburn play for the Iron Bowel.