Northwestern and Purdue hook up Saturday on ESPN 2 at 11 a.m. Central time, and there’s more on the line than just Joe Tiller’s fraying sanity. See, the Wildcats and Boilermakers play for a trophy. They just don’t know it.
Once upon a time, Northwestern was coached by Gary Barnett, Purdue by Jim Colletto, and both programs stunk to high Heaven. In fact, in the fall of 1993, they wound up tied for last in the Big Ten at 0-8.
To commemorate this dubious acheivement (remember, this was before Northwestern’s Rose Bowl season of 1995 and the revival of the Boilers under Tiller), Gunsch and I decided there should be a traveling trophy — Big Ten football is all about traveling trophies, from oaken buckets to axes and pigs — to ‘celebrate’ the meeting of what were, then, the two sorriest sacks in the league.
We brainstormed, pining for the perfect symbol of futility. If Illinois and Ohio State play for a wooden turtle, what should Northwestern and Purdue play for? A stuffed ferret?
It needed to be clever. It needed to be derogatory. It needed to be easily portable.
And, let’s face it, it needed to be cheap.
We were kicking around ‘Toilet Bowl’ jokes when it hit us:
A plunger. Perfect!
Thus, it was decreed — the loser of the Northwestern-Purdue game, henceforth, would be forced to keep and display The Golden Plunger in their respective home.
Enter Frank. In honor of the Northwestern-Purdue series resuming, Delin bought a baby training toilet and glued a giant plunger — painted gold — in the middle of the seat. He even had the scores of the series printed out on a tiny roll where the toilet paper would normally be. (It was cute. Cute and hideous.) He brought it to Evanston on the eve of the Iowa-Northwestern game in November 1995, where it was displayed at the Kappa Sigma house for about 14 seconds before people asked for it to be removed from plain sight.
Ultimately, the mini-toilet was lost and presumed dead. But the Golden Plunger survived — and has been exchanged between Pat’s household and mine ever since.
The trophy is currently resting in my office closet in Windsor Heights, waiting for its ticket to return home to the Gunsches.
Where it belongs.
(Highlights of last year’s Golden Plunger game are available below, courtesy The Big Ten Network.)
