Origin stories behind the trophies heighten college football rivalry games on the smaller stage

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The winners of the annual North Dakota State-South Dakota State rivalry football game get an unusual honor: hoisting a 78-pound trophy for all to see. The Dakota Marker is a rock — and it is heavier than it looks.

“When you get a chance to run over and grab it, you better be ready,” former North Dakota State player Landon Lechler recalled.

The trophy is a small-scale replica of the hundreds of large, pink, quartzite markers survey crews planted in the early 1890s to delineate North Dakota from South Dakota, one every half-mile for 360 miles. The two states were established in 1889 from the Dakota Territory.

“The boundary between North and South Dakota was the only one in the nation that had these monuments every one-half mile on the entire border,” said Gordon Iseminger, who taught for 57 years in the University of North Dakota History Department and walked nearly all of the border, decades, ago, to find the lonely markers. Maybe fewer than half of them remain.

Border battles on the smaller stages of college football have plenty of totems beloved by fans who often don’t have a professional team to root for. They might not be as well known as the “Play Like a Champion Today” signs at Oklahoma and Notre Dame — or another rock, Howard’s Rock, at Clemson — but they are treasured just as much.

Idaho and Montana play for the Little Brown Stein, an oversized replica stein mug fashioned in 1938. Since 1968, Colorado State and Wyoming have battled for the Bronze Boot, an actual combat boot worn in battle by a professor in Vietnam and later bronzed for the trophy. Ball State and Northern Illinois play for the Bronze Stalk, Akron and Kent State for the Wagon Wheel, Houston and Rice for the Bayou Bucket and the list goes on.

Montana and Montana State have the “Brawl of the Wild” with the Great Divide Trophy at stake, a 306-pound bronze behemoth depicting a grizzly bear and a bobcat fighting for a football on top. The 124th edition of the rivalry is Saturday at Montana, and the home team has won the bragging rights every year since 2019.

The Dakota Marker trophy debuted in 2004. It represents two rural states with a lot in common, from agriculture to an “east vs. west” dynamic, Lechler said.

“Even though we’re rural agriculture states out here away from the big cities, we still have some pretty prestigious athletes that can showcase on this stage (from) either of the two schools,” he said.

The Dakotas’ rivalry is a battle whether in Brookings or Fargo, said former South Dakota State player Jake Wieneke, who caught the game-winning touchdown in 2016 that landed the trophy for the first time in seven years. The noise of 19,000 fans drowns out everything, he said.

In recent years, the teams have been closely matched, meeting in the playoffs and even the FCS national championship. This year’s game in October was won for the second straight season by NDSU, which is ranked No. 1 in the Football Championship Subdivision and 11-0 going into this weekend’s regular-season finale.

“It’s just two great programs that get to go head to head, and they’re from states right next to each other, where they already play each other every year and already have that rivalry, and the fact that now they’re competing for national championships I think just adds to the rivalry,” Wieneke said.