By John Woodford

The Little Brown Jug is the oldest trophy game in Division I-A football. The 1869 song of the same name by Joseph Winner probably inspired the trophy's name and its paint job from putty to brown.

"Perhaps it is a matter of poetic justice that the Jug, now over a half-century old, has spent approximately half of its existence on the campus of each of these two great universities," Thomas B. Roberts of the class of 1904 wrote in 1959 of the Little Brown Jug that the Michigan and Minnesota football teams play for each fall.

The Wolverines have dominated since then, however, and this year's unprecedented comeback victory gave U-M a 66-23-3 edge in the series. Michigan's recent successes would have pleased Roberts, who died in 1966, because he played "an important, though at the time unwitting, role in the founding of America's most famous football trophy," he wrote.

Since Fielding H. Yost took over Michigan's squad in 1901, no opponent had tied, let alone beaten, the Wolverines. Then came October 31, 1903. Fearing Minnesota might dope Michigan's water in those days when "anything went that you could get away with--short of mayhem or murder," trainer Keene Fitzpatrick "sent the little student manager out to purchase a receptacle wherein to pack the drinking water, which would be free from suspicion." Roberts recalled.

"The jug was not brought from Ann Arbor as all the accounts have it, but was purchased in a little variety store in Minneapolis at the cost of just thirty cents. It was a five-gallon jug, therefore not 'little,' and was originally about the color of putty, therefore not 'brown.'"

And how did Roberts know? "I can state these facts with some degree of accuracy because I was that student manager for Michigan," said Roberts, who went on to become a successful realtor, specializing in Frank Lloyd Wright homes, in Oak Park, Illinois.

As for the game, after a scoreless first half Michigan "finally drove across the goal line (a five-point score in those days) and Hammond kicked [the] goal—score, Michigan 6, Minnesota 0."

But with two minutes to go the Golden Gophers tied the score "in the thickening darkness of an incipient snowstorm," and the "frenzied Minnesota crowd surged onto the field, sweeping along with it the little student manager who had purposely abandoned his thirty-cent jug which had served its purpose."

Back Row: Manager Thomas Roberts, Cecil Gooding, Dan McGugin, Charles Baird, John Curtis, Keene Fitzpatrick. Middle Row: Tom Hammond, Herb Graver, Joseph Maddock, Capt. Curtis Redden, Coach Fielding Yost, George Gregory, Henry Schulte. Front Row: Fred Norcross, Frank Longman, Hugh James, Willie Heston.

The game ended in a tie, and the two schools decided to suspend competition to avoid worse brutalities. But in 1909, Minnesota challenged Michigan, "We have your Little Brown Jug, come up and win it." Michigan accepted, won 15-6 and returned with the jug, which it kept for the next 10 years.

We are grateful to Anne Beckner of Los Angeles for sending us Roberts's story. She is his great-grandaughter and informed us that the daughter of the man who bought the jug, alumna Jeanne Roberts Blaine '32 of Glendale, California, would be delighted to add to the story.

Blaine, 93, said that her sisters and two brothers also had gone to U-M. One of the things her father was most proud of, she added, was that, having grown up on a small farm north of Grand Rapids, "Dad had nothing when he went to Michigan and couldn't have afforded joining a fraternity, but he was accepted into the honor fraternity Michigamua."