The Iowa and Minnesota football teams duke it out each year for the opportunity to take home the Floyd of Rosedale Trophy. But few know the story behind one of college football’s most iconic rivalry hardwares.
The Hawkeyes and Golden Gophers first met on Nov. 2, 1891, with Minnesota capturing a 42-4 victory. And although Minnesota leads the all-time series with 67 wins to Iowa’s 47 — including a winning streak of 12 from 1891 to 1916 and a 75-0 victory in 1903 — Iowa leads the trophy series with 44 of those wins to Minnesota’s 42.
The trophy series began with the 1934 matchup between Minnesota and Iowa at Iowa Stadium in Iowa City. In that contest, the Golden Gopher defense targeted a barrage of rough hits at Iowa halfback Ozzie Simmons — one of the era’s few Black football players — forcing Simmons to leave the game injured a handful of times.
Minnesota won the contest, 48-12, setting the scene for a hot rematch in 1935 in a return to Iowa Stadium.
Before the matchup, according to Gopher Sports, Iowa Gov. Clyde L. Herring said even if the officials ignored dirty plays on Simmons this time around, the Iowa crowd would not.
In response, Minnesota Attorney General Harry H. Peterson was outraged, and Minnesota football coach Bernie Bierman threatened to cut athletic relations with Iowa.
“Your remark that the crowd at the Iowa-Minnesota game will not stand for any rough tactics is calculated to incite a riot,” Peterson said, according to Minnesota Public Radio. “It is a breach of your duty as governor and evidences an unsportsmanlike, cowardly, and contemptible frame of mind.”
But Minnesota Gov. Floyd B. Olson sent a telegram to Herring the morning of the game in an attempt to cool matters — a telegram that changed the rivalry forever.
“Minnesota folks are excited over your statement about Iowa crowds … I have assured them you are law-abiding gentlemen and are only trying to get our goat,” Olson’s telegram said, according to Gopher Sports. “I will bet you a Minnesota prize hog against an Iowa prize hog that Minnesota wins.”
Herring accepted, and the situation calmed before kickoff.
Minnesota won the contest, 13-6, with no incident, as Golden Gopher players complimented Simmons for his play in the game, with Simmons returning the praise.
Shortly after the loss, Herring obtained an award-winning prize pig — the brother of the pig in the Will Rogers movie “State Fair” — by way of donation from Allen Loomis, owner of Rosedale Farms near Fort Dodge, Iowa.
Herring named the pig Floyd after Olson and personally walked it into the Minnesota governor’s carpeted office.
And Floyd of Rosedale was thus born.
Although the pig died of cholera eight months later, Olson recruited Saint Paul, Minnesota, sculptor Charles Brioschi to capture Floyd’s image.
The result was the Floyd of Rosedale trophy — a 98-pound bronze pig trophy that is nearly two feet long and just over a foot high. Every year from then onward, the Hawkeyes and Golden Gophers met for an opportunity to take the trophy home with a win.
“The catalytic moment in the tale is the wager and not Simmons’ injuries,” Jaime Schultz, who studied the history in her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Iowa, told the UI. “In these ways, the trophy has come to symbolize a long-standing, healthy rivalry between two Midwestern states rather than reminding us of racism in the region’s — and indeed the country’s — sporting past.”
But it has been eight years since the Golden Gophers last brought Floyd back to the Twin Cities of Minnesota, Iowa most recently capturing a 13-10 victory on Nov. 19, 2022.
Iowa and Minnesota will meet next on Oct. 21 inside Kinnick Stadium for their 117th overall meeting, the Hawkeyes looking to keep Floyd at home for a ninth-straight year while the Gophers look to bring Floyd back to his second home established nearly a century ago.
