Land Grant Trophy origins: Michigan State, Penn State and a reward like no other -

In George Perles’ mind, a Michigan State vs. Penn State football series had the chance to become something special.

At least that was the late Spartans football coach’s hope when he called Joe Paterno from the practice field ahead of the Aloha Bowl in December 1989 to welcome the Nittany Lions to the Big Ten. Penn State would play its first game in the conference in 1993.

“Joe and George wanted this game to be played the last game of the season, and both of them were a little bit tired of being overshadowed by Ohio State and Michigan,” said Dino Folino, the defensive backs coach on Perles’ Michigan State staff from 1988-94. He’s spent 25 years affiliated with Michigan State, the past 18 as the Spartans’ director of personnel/player development and relations. “Those guys wanted this to be as big a rivalry game as there was in the league — at least that was the thought.”

If there’s one thing to know about college football rivalries, it’s that they need to happen organically. Ohio State and Michigan didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to dislike one another. Fans of Auburn and Alabama aren’t at each other’s throats for only one week per year.

A second thing to know concerns the trophies at stake in many rivalry games. A rivalry trophy should at least be able to be hoisted by one person without fear of duct tape loosening or there being a risk of injury because a trophy is so cumbersome that it has to be lugged to the sideline on a handcart.

Well, Perles and Paterno tried.

Though there have been a handful of significant Penn State-Michigan State games over the past three decades, a true rivalry has never quite materialized. The teams will play again at 4 p.m. ET Saturday in Beaver Stadium, again in the shadows of Ohio State and Michigan, whose showdown at noon will headline the weekend and have a direct impact on the College Football Playoff.

But college football has gotten something out of Michigan State-Penn State that no other rivalry has come close to producing: the Land Grant Trophy. One of the quirkiest trophies in sports might also be one of the best conversation pieces.

“When I first saw it I rolled my eyes a little bit, but I told George I thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw because I didn’t want him to think otherwise,” Folino said. “It was a big deal to him. … George wasn’t one to admit that one of his ideas wasn’t perfect. So that trophy was, you know, like winning the Heisman or something.”

Complete with two shelves, Nittany Lion and Spartan statues and a generic looking topper that no one fully understands, this trophy has an origin story that’s every bit as cobbled together as the hunk of wood itself. With the trophy standing several feet tall and at least a foot wide and weighing more than 50 pounds, there is nothing else quite like it. Penn State leads the series 16-10 since joining the Big Ten, though Michigan State has won six of the past nine Land Grant Trophy games, including last year in East Lansing.

“For a block of wood, I think it’s the prettiest block of wood I’ve ever seen in my life,” Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford said. “It’s something that we definitely want back in our locker room.”

Michigan State recaptured the Land Grant Trophy in the snow last year. (Raj Mehta / USA Today)

When Larry Cushion and his wife Luella opened a sporting goods store in Lansing, Michigan, in 1958, there was no telling that their family-run business would one day be tasked with building an item like the Land Grant Trophy.

Larry was a golf pro and a Michigan State fan. He died in 1998, but his family still has Spartans football season tickets and his daughters run the business.

Through golf, Larry would get to know some of Michigan State’s players and coaches. As big box stores came to the area, he knew his sporting goods store couldn’t keep pace. They shifted to the other part of his business: Larry Cushion Trophies and Engraving.

Michigan State Athletics went to Larry for many of its trophies and plaques. It still works with the business, using it for many projects, including engraving the Old Brass Spittoon, which the Spartans lost to Indiana last week.

The Old Brass Spittoon dates back to 1950. Decades later, Perles wanted a trophy for the Penn State game. Somewhere along the way, the design went way off the rails. It’s believed that Budd Thalman, a former associate athletic director at Penn State, was asked to send a Nittany Lion statue to Michigan State and complied. They’d add on a Spartan figurine so each school was represented on the trophy. They’d tack on photos, too — one of Penn State’s Old Main and another of Michigan State’s Beaumont Tower. They’d keep one side of the large wooden rectangle base open with little plates for engraving. Each year the winning school would get its name on that plate.

“I remember when my dad said the people out at Michigan State brought him that Nittany Lion and the Sparty and they told him to do something with that,” said Larry’s daughter, Lee Ann Cushion. “Well, how can you put two pieces like that on there unless you build a structure that will have little shelves? … Our dad came up with the idea of the various little shelves on the trophy so he sort of knew where everything would go.”

Larry recommended a wooden base because of the weight of those figurines. He reached out to his biggest supplier, Tempo Wood Products, to see if it could help. The company, based 200-plus miles away from Lansing in Piqua, Ohio, was Larry’s go-to for wooden bases and plaques. Tempo Wood would build the solid walnut base from which all these items would dangle.

“Dad never bragged about having made that at all, but you could see it meant a lot to him. It really did,” said Lauree Cushion-Roney, Lee Ann’s sister.

Lauree gets a little defensive when she hears announcers describe the trophy in unflattering ways. She loves how students once dressed up like it and is surprised it’s been around for nearly 30 years. What other trophy could also fit alongside a couch and double as an end table? It’s a question she ponders aloud between laughs.

The Land Grant Trophy has a special place in Cushion family lore. (Courtesy of the Cushion sisters)

Like the many pieces of the trophy, the origin story of this beauty is complex. In 2010, Tempo Wood Products was bought by Dave Vosler. Vosler is a 1971 Penn State graduate who had no idea the company he purchased had anything to do with the Land Grant Trophy.

It’s apparently not the kind of thing one advertises on their website or includes in their company’s business portfolio. Vosler follows Penn State football and had seen the trophy on TV many times before unknowingly becoming associated with it.

When the Cushion sisters reached out about a different trophy base — Tempo Wood is still their largest supplier — they mentioned to Vosler that his company was the one that made the base for the Land Grant Trophy. Other employees had since filled him in on the details.

“I said, ‘Well, that’s kind of cool,’” Vosler said between laughs. “Then, I started seeing all the bad press about how everybody thinks it’s so ugly and this and that, so I said well, I’m not sure I should tell people that we made it!”

When Vosler picked up the phone this week, he initially thought there was a problem with the Land Grant Trophy. He was relieved to find out it’s as sturdy as ever.

“I guess (James) Franklin loves it, so that’s important,” Vosler said. “I think it started out kind of as a simplistic thing and then they just kept adding to it. It’s almost like a desk now.”

The base — which is solid walnut, much to the dismay of every player who has tried to lift it — was built first in Ohio. Because it was so big and bulky, UPS would not ship it.

Legend has it, in stories that were passed down from Tempo Wood’s previous owner and verified by the Cushion sisters, the trophy had to be driven from Piqua to Lansing. Larry Cushion would pick up the base in Toledo to break up the trip for both and take it back to his store. Transporting this item has never been easy.

“I was told they wrapped it in an old piece of carpet and then made a wooden case for it,” Vosler said. “They drove it, and apparently, according to the guy that worked here when I bought the company, he told me they called him and said, ‘Where’d you get that old, ratty carpet? Because it stinks to the high heaven!’”

Ah yes, the Land Grant Trophy was a success from the start.

Larry Cushion unwrapped the base and added the figurines and plates before passing it on to Michigan State. The night before the first Big Ten meeting between Penn State and Michigan State in November 1993, the Spartans held a reception on campus to unveil the trophy.

There were quite a few stares.

“I’m pretty sure that was the first time where the public really got a view of it,” said Jeff Nelson, Penn State’s former associate athletic director. “It was a sight to behold for sure.”

Nobody had the heart to tell Perles that the trophy he wanted for this game wasn’t spectacular looking. So, Folino did what any good employee would do and played along.

Penn State won that first game in dramatic fashion, 38-37. Almost immediately, an inside joke was born between assistant coaches and equipment managers. They’d bond over how unusual the trophy looked.

“Tom Bradley and I are very good friends,” Folino said of Penn State’s former longtime defensive coordinator. “And when one of us would win, the other would say, ‘Well, good, at least you get to take that ugly trophy back.’ Our kids couldn’t figure it out because it has the little Spartan on it and the Lion in another corner. … It certainly is a conversation piece because of what an odd-looking thing it is.”

Said Spider Caldwell, Penn State’s former equipment manager: “We always thought that the loser should take it because it was such a pain to haul around. … When you did lose the game, that was like the only consolation: You didn’t have to deal with that trophy.”

The trophy became an equipment manager’s worst nightmare. Because it’s too big to fit in any overhead bin on the team plane, where space is always at a premium, the Land Grant Trophy has to be transported in the equipment truck. There’s no case for it, and with so many pieces protruding from it, equipment managers like Caldwell have had to be creative when hauling it.

There have been plenty of cracked and chipped trophy pieces along the way. It felt like something was always falling off or needing to be screwed back in, Caldwell said.

“We’d wrap it in moving blankets, tape it all up and stick it in a laundry hamper to try and help protect it,” Caldwell said. “That metal top was always coming loose. There was like a metal rod that was always loose and you couldn’t tighten it, so we’d use duct tape — literally, the thing is duct-taped underneath to keep that top on. … We’d always try to get it at least semi-sturdy in time for the presentation.”

Getting the trophy to the sideline during the final minutes of the game requires a plan. When Penn State has possession of the trophy and plays at Spartan Stadium, it sets the trophy outside of the locker room so both teams can see it. In Beaver Stadium, the visiting locker room is on the opposite end of the stadium from the home team’s. Whoever has the trophy just keeps it in their locker room during the game.

It takes multiple people to lift it, so Penn State relies on a hand cart that the video staff uses to haul equipment. They load the Land Grant Trophy on the dolly, and typically the sports information director is tasked with wheeling it out to the field during the final minutes of the game.

Penn State holds a 16-10 edge when the Land Grant Trophy is at stake. (Matthew O’Haren / USA Today)

Behind that dolly are several equipment staffers holding their breath hoping nothing falls off during the celebration on television. Watching players struggle to lift the trophy her dad helped build is Lauree Cushion-Roney’s favorite part of the game.

“I just wait for that,” she said. “I don’t care which team wins. At the end it’s all about seeing who can lift it.”

Winning this beauty comes at a cost. There has long been the issue of the winning team remembering to get the plate on the side of the trophy engraved. Countless times when the week of the game arrives, someone in the football building would have to take care of the task they had all year to complete. It’s just one more thing to do during the busiest time of the year.

Lauree Cushion-Roney couldn’t help but laugh a few years ago when a student manager at Michigan State called the store with a serious question.

“He goes, ‘We have to get the plate made for the engraving for the Land Grant Trophy. Do I have to bring the whole trophy in?’” she recalled. “I said, ‘No! You won’t be able to bring in the whole trophy. It’s too big! Get a screwdriver and bring me the plate.’”

Whoever wins it displays the trophy in their football building alongside more prestigious — and normal-looking — trophies. Good luck trying to explain to a recruit how the Land Grant Trophy came to be.

“You could just see people walk by and go, ‘What?’ It was a curiosity piece,” said Guido D’Elia, Penn State’s former director of communications and branding who recently returned as an adviser.

The look, girth and logistical issues associated with the trophy almost spelled the end for the Land Grant Trophy in the mid-2000s. D’Elia and Tommy Venturino, Penn State’s director of football operations under Paterno, tried to come up with another trophy that Penn State and Michigan State could play for. They wanted something that could be lifted by one person but still had symbolic meaning to a pair of land grant universities that were both founded in 1855.

For a few weeks, they thought they had designed a new trophy. They even took their idea to the Big Ten.

“Tommy Venturino said, ‘How about (Abe) Lincoln’s hat?” said D’Elia. “I’m thinking like an exaggerated Lincoln’s top hat — like a big top hat. People would first say, ‘Oh, what the hell does he have to do with land grant?’ Well, he established the land grant universities (Lincoln signed the Morrill Act into law in 1862, which allowed each state to establish land grant colleges), so you’ll learn a little something here. It’s a history lesson too. Over a period of a couple years, it would come symbolic then of a land grant trophy.

“We took it to the conference and it just died a natural death.”

The problem? Northwestern and Illinois started playing for the Land of Lincoln Trophy in 2009, replacing their previous trophy, the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk. This trophy was designed after Lincoln’s authentic hat, which would look too similar to Penn State’s top hat proposal.

The Land of Lincoln Trophy sits atop an easy-to-lift 14-inch-by-14 inch wood base. There are no figurines dangling off it and absolutely no duct tape or loose rods. It’s everything Penn State hoped it could have.

“We thought we had solved it,” D’Elia said. “Maybe that’s the mystique of the Land Grant Trophy: It’s never to be anything worthwhile.”

Within the past decade, the Land Grant Trophy has taken on a life of its own thanks in large part to social media. Fans have created a Twitter account for the trophy, and there are always plenty of photos circulating during the week of the game.

Penn State coach James Franklin has been a good sport too, saying tongue in cheek several times during his nine years that this “may be the most beautiful trophy game in all of college football.”

“It’s a sight to be seen,” Franklin said this week. “It is just beautiful.”

For all that this trophy is and is not, none of that matters much when the Cushion family gathers to watch the game two days after Thanksgiving. Lauree and Lee Ann keep a framed photo of the trophy in their store — their family’s store — as a proud reminder of their parents and the role their family has in this game.

“We think about our dad and our mom,” Lee Ann Cushion said. “We’re football people, if you know what I mean. This game is really special for us, honestly. We’re so excited that we’re a part of the tradition because of that trophy.”

(Top photo: Randy Litzinger / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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