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This season marks the 100th anniversary of when Michigan and Minnesota first played for the Little Brown Jug.  Early this year I started on a quest to find out everything about the old trophy.  I reviewed the legends, interviewed writers, equipment managers, coaches and pored through newspapers, photos and other accounts on the history.  I even held the 5 gallon crock in my hands on a couple different occasions to get a good look.    Heading up to the 100th anniversary of the jug rivalry I’ll post some of those findings– hope you like it.

When I started my research on the Little Brown Jug earlier this year, I created a list of questions/facts I wanted to validate or at least understand a little better.   One of the items concerned this bit of jug history that’s been part of Jug lore for quite a while, here republished on insidemichiganfootball.com:

from insidemichiganfootball.com (under Traditions >> Rivalry Games)

This little detail is oft-repeated in recaps of Jug history (even in Angelique’s new book), but I wondered if anyone ever bothered to find out what actually went down over this stretch.  Having written on this era (see various eBay Watch pieces on the early 1930s or in Hail to the Victors 2008), I knew the Gophers and Wolverines fielded powerful squads and these contests were fiercely fought.  Did the teams just accept that the victor would not get to carry the jug off the field after these games?  How could the jug be gone for four years?

What I discovered was pretty cool–a wild tale that hopefully you’ll see published in full elsewhere soon.   Here’s a timeline of what really happened:

1931:

• Mid-September 1931. The drama actually started in 1931, not 1930 as the official history goes.  The jug vanished from the Administration building in the mid-September in 1931.
• October 29, 1931. The New York Times reports that the jug is recovered.
• October 30, 1931.  The Times backs off the story from the previous day, reporting that the jug found was a “poor imitation.”
• November 19, 1931.  The week of the Minnesota game, a car pulled up to the Tuomy Hills gas station (now the Bearclaw Coffee at the corner of Washtenaw and Stadium) with four men wearing “dark goggles”.  One of the disguised passengers rolled out a freshly painted jug onto the pavement and it is scooped up by gas station attendant K.D. Smith.  Here’s Smith looking a bit puzzled in this photo republished in the 1932 Michiganensian:

Photo: 1932 Michiganensian (U-M Yearbook)

• November 20-21, 1931 – The next day, U-M athletic department officials announce that the gas station jug is authentic, but many skeptics are afoot including Ann Arbor Daily News writer Mill Marsh who after inspecting the crock labels it “a clever imitation.”  On the field, Michigan defeats the Gophers 6-0 and retains the jug.

1932:

• November 18, 1932. Michigan team goes to Minneapolis to renew the rivalry.  Talk rages around town about the jug the Wolverines tote from Ann Arbor.  The legendary Fielding Yost makes the trip to the Twin Cities.  When grilled about the authenticity of the jug, Yost tells reporters, “Why sure, it’s the real jug,” adding, “Take a look at it. Does it look like a phoney?”  Skeptics remain unconvinced.
• November 19, 1932.  In Michigan’s final game of the season, the Wolverines prevail 3-0.  Michigan, Yost and Harry Kipke return to Ann Arbor with the jug.  Later Michigan is declared national champion thanks to the mathematical formula used to settle the matter those days: the Dickinson System.

1933:

• August 21, 1933. A different jug appears in Ann Arbor, this time “in a clump of bushes near the medical building” on East University.  Yost confirms this is the real jug (effectively admitting he tried to pass off the gas station jug as the real deal) and asked that, “the person who had the jug the two years it was missing,” to contact him and explain what happened.

New  York Times, August 22, 1932

• November 15, 1933. In the days leading up to the 1933 game, Minnesota’s Oscar Munson, the custodian who originally found ‘The Michigan Jug’ in 1903, remains skeptical about the newly found jug and even suggests that Yost planted it in the bushes on East U.
• November 18, 1933.  The game ends in a 0-0 tie.  Michigan retains the jug and is once again named national champion after the season.

1934:

• November 3, 1934. The Gophers finally get it done, crushing Gerald Ford and the horrific 1934 Wolverines 34-0 in Minneapolis.  The jug is returned to Munson who later confirms he’s satisfied that the jug (which he hides away!) is the real deal.

The Real Story: By pulling together these pieces, it appears as though today’s official Michigan athletic department line on the disappearance is a jumbled version of the truth, mixing a few of the events.  Instead of being missing from 1930 to 1934, it looks like the trophy was gone between September 1931 and August 1933.  And it wasn’t recovered “behind a clump of bushes by a gas station attendant” as this is blending two incidents.  An imitation jug was dropped off at a gas station in 1931 and yes, handled by an attendant.  A different jug, by all accounts the real deal, was found in bushes on campus in 1933.

As an aside, the culprit for a portion of the confusion over the story might fall on the Minnesota media department.  The 1943 Gopher game program included this caption under a republished photo of K.D. Smith at the gas station, and perhaps that’s where this historical nugget had its origins:

While this clarifies/corrects one piece of jug history, many other remained including a key question: Was the jug that was found in 1933 indeed the “real deal”, that is, the jug that was left in Minnesota in 1903 and first played for 100 years ago in 1909?  Has the 1903 jug survived all these years?  More to come…

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