Pay attention now if you have a pulse for University of Minnesota football. It’s Michigan week and the Golden Gophers have an opportunity Saturday to connect with their glorious past.
Make a visit to campus this week. Walk over to the old site of Memorial Stadium where the McNamara Alumni Center now stands at 200 Oak Street Southeast.
And listen!
Can you hear the voices of five-time national championship coach Bernie Bierman and his Heisman Trophy winner Bruce Smith? Wait, isn’t that southern drawl coming from coach Murray Warmath? And that’s two-time Big Ten MVP Paul Giel admitting even in the afterlife “The Minnesota Rouser” still gives him chills.
Maybe hear the chorus of other voices chanting, “Wish Again, Michigan!”
Long ago it was a given that Michigan and Minnesota would be in the hunt for Big Ten and national championships. Both schools approached their matchups with confidence and that’s what spurred the “Wish Again, Michigan” pinback buttons that Gopher fans proudly wore at home games.
This was a rivalry worthy of newsreels in movie theaters across the country. It was rooted in the greatness of two proud programs and encapsulated in a piece of crockery, the Little Brown Jug.
In November of 1903, a day after Michigan and the Gophers played to a 6-6 tie in Minneapolis, U custodian Oscar Monson brought a water jug to athletics director L.J. Cooke. According to lore, Monson said in his Scandinavian accent: “Yost (the Michigan coach) left his jug!” The Gophers painted the jug and from there was born the oldest travelling rivalry trophy in college football.
The jug has mostly been “ay-wall” in the city of lakes since 1968. The Gophers have defeated Michigan four times during that span in the famous series that stands 73-23 and 3 ties in favor of the lads from Ann Arbor.
Three of the four most recent Minnesota wins were on the road. The one home victory came in 1977 when the 4-2 Gophers staged a dramatic upset against a then No. 1 ranked Michigan team. Minnesota punished Bo Schembechler’s Wolverines that day in game that had a roaring crowd at Memorial Stadium delirious over the 16-0 upset.
Butch Nash played for the Gophers in the 1930s and then was an assistant coach over five decades at his alma mater. He reveled in the Michigan-Minnesota Little Brown Jug rivalry. It was Nash who spoke from the heart about the importance of the rivalry to Gopher players and coaches before the wins in 1977 and 1986.
In 1986 quarterback Rickey Foggie’s fourth quarter running set up a game-winning Chip Lohmiller field goal for a 20-17 win over No. 2 ranked Michigan in what would be a 6-5 regular season for Minnesota. First-year head coach John Gutekunst was in his first season and had taken over for miracle worker Lou Holtz whose savvy moves in two seasons at Minnesota included bringing Nash out of retirement to be a volunteer coach.
In 2005 running back Gary Russell’s 61-yard sprint down the sidelines positioned Jason Giannini for a game-ending field goal and a 23-20 Minnesota win. Gopher coach Glen Mason was so excited that after his 5-1 team returned home, he brought the jug with him when he and his wife went out to dinner.
Among the highlights of coach Jerry Kill’s career at Minnesota was his 30-13 road win over the Wolverines in 2014. Quarterback Mitch Leidner ran for a touchdown and passed for another in the victory. A 30-yard interception return for a touchdown by De’Vondre Campbell was part of a defensive performance that saw the Gophers limit Michigan to 171 yards in total offense as Minnesota opened the season 4-1.
Warmath, who enjoyed his Jack Daniels, probably found the whiskey extra smooth when he celebrated wins over Michigan three seasons in a row from 1960-1962. The Gophers were national champions in 1960 and played twice in the Rose Bowl (1961 and 1962) during a stretch when Minnesota went 22-6-1.
Two of the three wins by Warmath’s teams came in Ann Arbor but the one home game is the most memorable. All-American Minnesota quarterback Sandy Stephens (who also played defensive back) had a game in Memorial Stadium on October 28, 1961 that is one of the highlights of his career.
The Wolverines led 20-8 in the fourth quarter. That set up one of the great Minnesota comebacks in Little Brown Jug history. Minnesota rallied to win 23-20 in the closing minutes with big plays including a one-handed interception by Stephens of a Michigan pass late in the game that ended any Wolverine hopes of winning.
Stephens ran 63 yards for a touchdown to give Minnesota its first score of the game when trailing 13-0. Married just days before, he was among multiple heroes on offense and defense. “Sandy played a hell of a game. He must have been playing for his new wife because he never played that well for me,” Warmath joked in his biography The Autumn Warrior.
Leave it to Giel to play one of the most extraordinary games of his career against Michigan. The Wolverines came to Minneapolis ranked No. 5 in the country and the Gophers were a mediocre team who would have been a lot worse without their All-American run-pass superstar.
In the 1953 game the senior halfback from Winona scored two touchdowns and passed for a third in a 22-0 victory. The upset came in the 50th anniversary game of the Little Brown Jug!
Bierman won national championships at Minnesota in 1934-1936, and 1940 and 1941. His first three national title teams didn’t allow Michigan to score a single point as the Gophers outscored the Wolverines 100-0! The “Grey Eagle’s” 1940 squad won 7-6 against Michigan and the next season beat the Wolverines 7-0 in front of more than 84,000 fans in Ann Arbor.
Those undefeated 1940 and 1941 teams included Gopher football immortal Bruce Smith from Faribault. He won the Heisman Trophy in 1941, the only Gopher in history to earn college football’s most coveted individual award. He fit the profile of the All-American boy of that era, and Hollywood even made a 1942 movie about him titled “Smith of Minnesota.” (Don’t bother to ask if any other Gophers had movies made about them.)
It was in 1940 that Smith may have starred in his most revered game. Playing on a muddy field against Michigan at Memorial Stadium, the Wolverines took a 6-0 lead. But Smith, a halfback in the single-wing offense, ran 80 yards through the muck for a touchdown that along with an extra point gave Minnesota a 7-6 win.
Smith was destined to be special. His father Lucius Smith played tackle and kicked for the Gophers about 30 years before his son became a hero at Minnesota. In 1910 the Gophers and Michigan, both undefeated, played a game to decide the national championship. The Wolverines won 6-0 in Ann Arbor and for some unknown reason Lucius held himself responsible for the painful loss. Legend is he vowed to have a son who would avenge the defeat.
That’s the kind of lore making the Little Brown Jug rivalry so iconic. Come Saturday, the Gophers get an opportunity to write another chapter they and their fans will remember for a long time.
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