New Cy-Hawk trophy

A new trophy given to the winner of the annual Iowa-Iowa State football game was unveiled at the Iowa State Fair this morning. It features a farmer kneeling over a bushel of corn with his wife a two kids.

It replaces the original Cy-Hawk trophy which was made before the series resumed in 1977 and retired last month.

Reaction on the message boards was swift and negative. Jon Miller runs the Hawkeyenation.com website.

“For once Iowa and Iowa State fans are in agreement on something,” Miller says, “I think right now if you put a poll out there to either bring back the old Cy-Hawk or keep the new one, I think the old one would win in a landslide, and I think that’s saying quite a bit.

Miller says the biggest problem fans are having with the new design is that it has nothing to do with football.

“This is a football game, the trophy goes to the winner of the game,” Miller says and he says the trophy looks like “something you win find in a precious moments catalog.”

Miller says the trophy wont’ take away from the game, but he wonders about the reaction of the big linemen who run across the field to grab the trophy after a win and then see this trophy.

Paul Clark runs Cyclonereport.com and says Cyclone fans on his site are nearly unanimous in their dislike of the new trophy. “It’s almost if not 100% negative, it’s very close, it’s 98 or 99,” Clark says. He agrees with Miller that the trophy is the one thing that seems to have united Hawkeye and Cyclone fans. He says he’s looked at different sites and the fans all say the trophy misses the mark.

Clark Cyclone fans don’t like it because it lacks anything football related. He says the feeling is it’s not sports and doesn’t belong in sports. “I think the feeling is that maybe some non-sports people got involved and this is what they came up with,” Clark says.

Clark says fans of both schools were happy to see the original trophy retired last month but were apparently hoping for something better as a replacement. He says he called the original trophy one “only a mother could love,” but he says the symbolism made it work. Clark says he can see this trophy only lasting one year before it goes back to the drawing board and they come up with something else.

The new trophy will be presented to the winner of this year’s game which will be September 10th in Jack Trice Stadium.