This Just In ...
Kevin Fischer is a veteran broadcaster, the recipient of over 150 major journalism awards from the Milwaukee Press Club, the Wisconsin Associated Press, the Northwest Broadcast News Association, the Wisconsin Bar Association, and others. He has been seen and heard on Milwaukee TV and radio stations for over three decades. A longtime aide to state Senate Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature, Kevin can be seen offering his views on the news on the public affairs program, "InterCHANGE," on Milwaukee Public Television Channel 10, and heard filling in on Newstalk 1130 WISN. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, and their lovely baby daughter, Kyla Audrey, in Franklin.
OK, let's play FInal Jeopardy
Back by popular demand, it’s time for another This Just In edition of:FINAL JEOPARDY!
Yes, I know we haven’t played it in awhile), but I think you’re really going to enjoy today’s contest.
Are you ready?
Well then, let’s play!
Today’s Final Jeopardy category is:
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Now, you know how this works.
In a moment, I’ll give you the Final Jeopardy clue.
You will have 30 seconds (if you play fair, that will be when the music runs out) to come up with an answer and remember, players……… your answer must be in the form of a question.
Ready.
Here’s your clue.
THE SLAB OF BACON.
THE SLAB OF BACON.
Good luck! (please click)
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OK, time’s up. Today’s Final Jeopardy category is COLLEGE SPORTS.
The Final Jeopardy clue was, THE SLAB OF BACON.
The correct Final Jeopardy answer is:
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What was the name of the trophy the Wisconsin Badgers and Minnesota Gophers played football for BEFORE they played for Paul Bunyan’s Axe?
From the University of Minnesota website:
The series between Minnesota and Wisconsin ranks as the longest in Division 1-A football; and “Paul Bunyan’s Axe” has the history of one of college football’s fiercest rivalries emblazoned on its six-foot long handle. The first game in the series, a 63-0 Gopher victory in 1890, is printed on the handle near the axe’s head. The results of every successive game line the handle in red ink. There have been so many games that the scores scroll up and down the width of both sides of the handle, and school officials have now resorted to writing scores on the narrow edges of the six-foot shaft.
By 1930, “Paul Bunyan’s Axe” wasn’t even created, although the rivalry had already reached feverish levels. The 1906 game was canceled by President Theodore Roosevelt, who had decided to cool off heated college football rivalries, because of injuries and deaths on the field. In 1914, Minnesota faced the Badgers for the Gophers’ first Homecoming game; likewise, Wisconsin hosted Minnesota for the Badgers’ first in 1919. Between the years 1923 and 1925, the teams battled to three straight ties.
To symbolically capture the amazing atmosphere of the annual match-up, Dr. R. B. Fouch of Minneapolis fashioned a bacon slab out of black walnut to serve as the traveling trophy that he hoped would compare to the well-known “Little Brown Jug,” which Minnesota and Michigan played for every year. The “Slab of Bacon,” first played for in 1930, had a football carved on top inscribed with an “M” or “W”, depending on how you held it. The idea was that the winning team would “bring home the bacon.”
But in the early ’40s, the Slab of Bacon became the “Missing Slab of Bacon.” Peg Watrous, who was the president of Wisconsin women students at the time, relates that she and her counterpart from Minnesota were to have a symbolic exchange after the game, whereby the trophy would be awarded to the winning team. Minnesota won, but in characteristic fashion, a post-game melee broke out on the field, with students and spectators running crazy over the field. Watrous couldn’t find her counterpart and was left “holding the bacon,” as it were. “I have no memory of what happened after that…The whole thing was a dud, as I feared it would be,” Watrous remembered good-humoredly, “and someone in charge probably hid the bacon.”But the two teams had to play for something, so in 1948 the Wisconsin W Club instituted “Paul Bunyan’s Axe” as a trophy more befitting the grand rivalry between the two schools.
The Slab of Bacon was back in the news in the summer of 1994, when the long-lost trophy was found after a Camp Randall Stadium storage room was cleaned out. Wisconsin officials estimated that it had been missing since 1945; yet the scores of every Wisconsin-Minnesota game from 1930 through 1970 were printed on the back of the slab. It is one of those Twilight Zonesque mysteries that remains unexplained and contributes to the legend of Minnesota’s and Wisconsin’s “Border Battle” rivalry.
The Badgers play at Minnesota this Saturday for Paul Bunyan’s Axe. Who can forget the fantastic finish between these two teams in 2005 in Head Coach Barry Alvarez’s last game against the Gophers.
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