Trophy games are a staple of college football, especially in the Big Ten. There are 78 trophy games across FBS, and 17 of those are Big Ten games. 5 other trophy games involve at least one Big Ten team. 3 other trophy games involve a team from Ohio. The Buckeyes have just one trophy game, and it's not against a team that you think of as a chief rival. Why is that?
The Illibuck trophy started in 1925 as a live turtle. It is the second-oldest trophy in the Big Ten, only behind the Little Brown Jug (Michigan and Minnesota). In those days, the Buckeyes and the Fighting Illini always played each other in the last game of the season, and the turtle was selected as the trophy for the winning team because of its long lifespan.
That plan only lasted a few months, as the turtle died in April of 1926 after Illinois won the trophy the year prior. After Illinois killed the Illibuck, they created a wooden turtle as the new trophy. The Illibuck that will be awarded to the winner this Saturday is the 10th version of the Illibuck.
There are a couple of major reasons why the Ohio State-Illinois series isn't much of a rivalry these days. When the Illibuck was first created, these two teams were consistently competing for Western Conference titles. What we didn't know at that time was what these two programs were building towards. The Buckeyes were becoming a national power.
They won the national title under Paul Brown in 1942 and were one of college football's top programs under Woody Hayes in the 50s and 60s. Illinois went the other way. Outside of some occasional good years, the Fighting Illini were one of the Big Ten's worst teams from World War II until 2020. The rivalry became so one-sided and so unimportant that they stopped playing it every year.
The two programs played each other every year from 1914 to 2002. The game became a yearly rivalry once again when the Big Ten split into divisions, and both were in the Leaders Division. When they realigned in 2014, they were put in separate divisions.
Ohio State was in the East and Illinois in the West. From 2014-'23, they played just three times. When the Big Ten expanded in 2024, the conference members were able to choose what rivalries they wanted to protect. Ohio State and Illinois both decided not to protect the Illibuck. The 2025 Illibuck game was the first in 8 years, which is the longest they've ever gone without playing. The Buckeyes will return to Champaign in 2028.
Before Ohio State's rise to prominence, Michigan was the dominant program of the West. When Ohio State started challenging the Wolverines, that became the premier rivalry. Obviously, anyone reading this understands how that rivalry has developed, and there isn't really enough air for any other Buckeye rival to breathe, especially considering they don't have any other obvious rival like Michigan does with Michigan State.
In the late 2000s and 2010s, when Michigan wasn't really challenging Ohio State, fans tried to look for a second rival. Michigan State, Penn State, and even Clemson were on that level at a time, but once Michigan rose back to national prominence, it became clear once again that no rival will ever be Michigan for Ohio State.
So why doesn't Ohio State-Michigan have a trophy? Well, it kind of does. Ohio State players win gold pants for winning the game, while Michigan players get a necklace with a pendant of the final score for winning the game. Each program rewards the win in their own way, but there isn't an actual trophy. Some would make the case that the rivalry is too good for a trophy, but it is such an odd thing that the conference of trophy games doesn't have a trophy for its biggest rivalry.
Ohio State sometimes feels like they don't fit into the Big Ten culture, and the lack of trophy games is a part of that. But they are also in an odd spot geographically. There is no other Big Ten team in Ohio, and the only other power conference team in the state is Cincinnati, whose success in football is all relatively recent, and the two schools have never consistently played each other.
So what about their border rivals? Indiana and Purdue have never consistently been good enough to be rivals with the Buckeyes (IU's very recent success notwithstanding). Michigan State could be a trophy rival, but both schools are more focused on Michigan. Maybe there should've been a trophy enacted for the Ohio State-Penn State game when the Nittany Lions joined the conference in 1993, but that obviously never happened.
At the end of the day, Ohio State's goals are always going to be the same. The only trophies that matter are the gold pants in November, the Stagg trophy in December, and the College Football Playoff trophy in January. Admittedly, a wooden turtle looks funny next to those ones, but that's what makes college football great.
No other sport in the world has something like this, and I think Ohio State and Buckeye fans should embrace it more than they do. The expectations in Columbus are high, which makes the season not always fun at times, and these kinds of things can bring some levity.
Add us as a preferred source on Google