Is Michigan-Minnesota still a rivalry? As Big Ten expands, the Little Brown Jug endures

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Jon Falk is the foremost protector of the Little Brown Jug and the rivalry it represents.

Falk spent 40 years as Michigan’s equipment manager before retiring in 2013. When Bo Schembechler hired him in 1974, he put Falk in charge of three sacred artifacts: the Paul Bunyan Trophy for the Michigan State rivalry, the Big Ten championship trophy and the Little Brown Jug.

Falk took that duty seriously. The jug has been associated with the Michigan-Minnesota rivalry since 1903, when it first appeared on the Michigan sideline. It has survived World Wars, pandemics, the Great Depression, a mysterious disappearance in the 1930s and many rounds of conference realignment. It even survived a brush with disaster in the late 1980s when Falk’s daughter was playing in the equipment room and nearly knocked it over.

“It’s a valuable piece of pottery,” Falk said.

Falk is an unabashed apologist for the Michigan–Minnesota rivalry, a series that was still being highlighted as one of college football’s greatest rivalries in the late 1960s by the likes of Sports Illustrated’s Dan Jenkins. In the decades since then, Michigan-Minnesota has become more of a niche rivalry than a national event, eclipsed by The Game between Michigan and Ohio State, the Iron Bowl between Auburn and Alabama, the Red River Rivalry between Texas and Oklahoma and other high-stakes games.

That’s partly because Michigan rarely loses possession of the jug, which has been in Ann Arbor for all but four years since 1967. It’s also a result of scheduling changes that turned Michigan-Minnesota into an occasional rivalry instead of an annual one. Saturday’s meeting is only the fifth game in the series in the past 10 seasons.

The Gophers and Wolverines played every year from 1929 through 1998 before a pair of two-year breaks in 1999 and 2000 and 2009 and 2010. The meetings became even less frequent with the switch to the East-West divisional alignment in 2014. When the Big Ten added four teams from the Pac-12 and scrapped its divisions, the league announced 12 protected rivalries that would be played every year. Michigan-Minnesota didn’t make the list.

The rapid pace of change in college football has sparked fears that some of the sport’s quirks and historical oddities could lose their significance. Falk, 75, is part of a generation of oral historians who want to make sure relics like the Brown Jug aren’t forgotten.

“The Little Brown Jug has always been valued here,” Falk said. “There’s years that we don’t play them. Of course, we play Ohio State and Michigan State every year. (Those games) are no more important than the Little Brown Jug.”

Falk knows the history of the jug by heart. Before a game at Minnesota in 1903, Michigan coach Fielding Yost sent a student manager named Tommy Roberts to buy a 30-cent Red Wing Pottery jar to hold water for the team. The reasons aren’t entirely clear, though it’s been suggested that Yost feared someone might tamper with Michigan’s water supply.

Minnesota dueled Michigan to 6-6 tie, the first time in 30 games under Yost that Michigan wasn’t victorious. Minnesota fans rushed the field with two minutes remaining, forcing officials to end the game early. In the chaos, Michigan left its water jug behind. A custodian named Oscar Munson found the jug and took it to Minnesota’s athletic director. Once tempers cooled and the series resumed in 1909, the teams agreed that the winner would get to keep the jug.

In 1931, rumors began to circulate that the jug had gone missing from its place in Michigan’s administration building. The Associated Press reported the Jug had been discovered in an “infrequently visited storeroom” inside the Michigan Union and suggested some unknowing person had removed it, thinking the humble piece of pottery looked out of place among Michigan’s other trophies.

That wasn’t the end of the story. The following day, the AP issued an updated bulletin saying the jug was still missing. After learning of the jug’s disappearance, pranksters had begun planting imitations around Ann Arbor, much to the chagrin of Phil Pack, Michigan’s publicity director and the keeper of the jug.

“Pack prowled around in a cider mill today, looking for clues,” the AP reported. “He found a lot of jugs — but not the little brown one.”

In November 1931, the Michigan Daily reported that four men drove up to a gas station in Ann Arbor in a “large Cadillac touring car” and rolled the “old brown water jug” onto the ground. The men had hats pulled over their eyes, and the car’s license plate was smeared with mud. The gas station attendant thought the license plate resembled one from Minnesota, and an official narrative emerged: Minnesota fans had stolen the jug from Michigan’s administration building, then dumped it at the gas station when news of the theft began to spread.

Despite skepticism from Minnesota, Yost insisted the jug recovered at the gas station was the authentic one. Two years later, another jug turned up in a clump of bushes near the University of Michigan Hospital. Yost recognized this jug as the authentic one, conceding the one recovered at the gas station two years earlier was a fake. According to the official history, the jug that will be handed to the winner of Saturday’s game is the authentic one purchased by Tommy Roberts 101 years ago.

“As far as we know, it’s the same jug,” Falk said.

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It’s a point of pride for Falk that Michigan lost the jug only three times during his 40 years as equipment manager. The first time was in 1977, when unranked Minnesota upset No. 1 Michigan 16-0 — in part, Falk said, because Minnesota’s groundskeepers left the sprinklers on all night, leaving the field a soggy mess.

In 1986, Schembechler entered the Minnesota game on the cusp of breaking Yost’s school record for coaching victories. Michigan’s players collected $500 to purchase a plaque that Falk was going to present to Schembechler after the game. Minnesota upset Michigan that day, and the players spent another $200 to change the engraving. Falk presented the plaque to Schembechler the following week after Michigan beat Ohio State in Columbus, making good on quarterback Jim Harbaugh’s guarantee.

Michigan won the next 16 games against Minnesota, which hired Glen Mason as its coach in 1997. Mason, a former assistant coach at Ohio State, once ribbed Falk for being a poor host and not even bringing him a cup of coffee when the Buckeyes played in Ann Arbor. From that point forward, Falk always showed up with a cup of coffee in hand.

Minnesota came close to beating Michigan in 2003 and 2004, losing each game by a field goal. Before the 2005 game at Michigan Stadium, Falk made his customary walk to the visiting locker room to greet Mason.

“I’ve got the cup of coffee,” Mason told him. “Now I want to get the jug.”

Minnesota beat Michigan 23-20 that day on a last-second field goal. The Gophers boarded their charter flight, jug in hand, and were greeted by a throng of fans at the airport. Mason called his wife and told her to meet him at Murray’s, a well-known Minneapolis steakhouse, for a celebratory dinner. When he pulled up to the restaurant, he had the jug sitting next to him in the car.

Mason planned to leave the jug outside, but the restaurant valet was worried it might get stolen. So Mason toted the jug inside and kept it on the table next to him at dinner as fans lined up to take pictures with the famous trophy.

“I turned around and saw a guy standing there with the jug in one hand and his martini glass in the other,” Mason said. “He’d had a few, and I thought, ‘He’s going to break that sucker.’ The picture’s still up in Murray’s.”

When Harbaugh was hired as Michigan’s coach in 2015, he invited Falk back as a special adviser. Michigan lost the jug in 2014, Brady Hoke’s final season, and one of Falk’s proudest moments was being asked by Harbaugh to retrieve the jug from the Minnesota sideline after Michigan regained it in 2015.

“I’ll tell you, I cried and I ran onto the field for the first time in my life,” Falk said. “I grabbed that jug and we all walked off into the Michigan locker room.”

Now fully retired, Falk has handed off all jug-related duties to Gary Hazelitt, Michigan’s equipment director. Falk doesn’t have an official role with the program but said coach Sherrone Moore has welcomed him with open arms. He has a spot in the Michigan Stadium press box and greets players in the locker room after games, just as he did for 40 years as equipment manager.

“When you’re 75 years old, you’re doing the best you can,” Falk said. “To be honest with you, it’s being around the kids and being in the locker room that keeps you young.”

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For many years, Falk kept the jug locked away in the equipment room, fearing something might happen to it. Eventually, he decided it “wasn’t fair to the jug” to have it hidden in storage all year. Michigan began displaying it in Schembechler Hall, and it now sits in a trophy display that was added as part of Michigan’s recent locker room renovation.

Michigan-Minnesota doesn’t generate the same buzz as the Michigan State or Ohio State game, but players still consider this a rivalry. Wide receiver Fredrick Moore said Michigan has been talking about the jug “since the summertime,” and keeping it in Ann Arbor has been a point of emphasis this week.

As long as Falk is around, that’s not going to change.

“If you see the faces of these kids Saturday,” Falk said, “whoever wins, when they swoop in and take that Little Brown Jug, it’s the proudest day of their life.”

(Top photo: Bailey Hillesheim / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)