BleedGopher
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per Pat:
There was an effort made by Charley Hallman, the late, unforgettable author of "Gophers Notes'' in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, to get The Slab of Bacon returned to his beloved rodents.
According to a Hallman piece in July 1994, a committee had been formed to decide the trophy's fate, with associate ADs Mark Dienhart (Minnesota) and Joel Maturi (Wisconsin) in charge.
"I remember The Slab of Bacon committee,'' Maturi said this week. "We never had a meeting. We had bigger issues in both athletic departments.''
Maturi was the Gophers' athletic director from 2002 through 2012. And a larger Badgers-Gophers issue he faced took place at the Big Ten meeting where a decision was being made on how to arrange those original "Leaders'' and "Legends'' divisions for the 2011 football season.
"The commissioner, Jim Delany, was devoted to the idea of equal competition within the divisions,'' Maturi said. "We went through endless models, and the final three they came up with didn't have us playing Wisconsin annually — in a different division and not as our protected crossover game.
"I got up and said, 'Minnesota and Wisconsin is the oldest rivalry in major college football. If I go home without us playing Wisconsin every year, I'm going to get fired.'
"Fred Glass from Indiana said, 'We can't get Joel fired,' and we settled on a model with Wisconsin as our crossover game.''
www.startribune.com
Go Gophers!!
There was an effort made by Charley Hallman, the late, unforgettable author of "Gophers Notes'' in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, to get The Slab of Bacon returned to his beloved rodents.
According to a Hallman piece in July 1994, a committee had been formed to decide the trophy's fate, with associate ADs Mark Dienhart (Minnesota) and Joel Maturi (Wisconsin) in charge.
"I remember The Slab of Bacon committee,'' Maturi said this week. "We never had a meeting. We had bigger issues in both athletic departments.''
Maturi was the Gophers' athletic director from 2002 through 2012. And a larger Badgers-Gophers issue he faced took place at the Big Ten meeting where a decision was being made on how to arrange those original "Leaders'' and "Legends'' divisions for the 2011 football season.
"The commissioner, Jim Delany, was devoted to the idea of equal competition within the divisions,'' Maturi said. "We went through endless models, and the final three they came up with didn't have us playing Wisconsin annually — in a different division and not as our protected crossover game.
"I got up and said, 'Minnesota and Wisconsin is the oldest rivalry in major college football. If I go home without us playing Wisconsin every year, I'm going to get fired.'
"Fred Glass from Indiana said, 'We can't get Joel fired,' and we settled on a model with Wisconsin as our crossover game.''
Slab of Bacon trophy mystery unsolved, but Gophers-Badgers still served annually
Before they battled for Paul Bunyan's Axe, the Gophers and Badgers spent more than a decade playing for the 'Slab of Bacon' trophy that's still in Wisconsin — when it shouldn't be.
www.startribune.com
Go Gophers!!
