Cy-Hawk talk

I asked for topics and readers kicked up a dozen or so good ones.

Here's an idea from Mike, a reader from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

". . . when the news goes dry this summer, maybe you could consider using your blog to encourage Hy-Vee and the athletic departments at Iowa and Iowa State to throw that Cy-Hawk Trophy in the dumpster where it belongs and create a classy replacement.

Honestly, that trophy is an embarrassment to both schools and to Hy-Vee. Why it was created in the first place, and why it has been allowed to persist is beyond me. I'd be too embarrassed to give it to a Pop Warner team."

Mike offers these ideas:

* It's called the Cy-Hawk Trophy, so why not an oak base featuring the two mascots? They could be high-fiving, or shaking hands or even glaring at each other... :) I think this concept has great potential. I'm not sure there's another trophy in college football that features two mascots.

* Or how about statuettes of Nile Kinnick and Jack Trice on an oak base? The two stadium namesakes could be shaking hands.

* We could place the statuettes or Kinnick and Trice in replicas of their respective stadiums.

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What do you think? Feel free to comment, but if you feel as if your comment is too long, e-mail me (marc.morehouse@gazcomm.com) and I'll create another blog post.

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Here's a story I wrote on the topic in 2004.

IOWA CITY - Lore doesn't come with a notary. So we're not entirely sure if the Greater Des Moines Athletic Club is a myth or a bar.

We don't know exactly how the state got stuck with the hubcap/chopping block that is the Cy-Hawk Trophy, the traveling trophy that goes to the winner of the Iowa-Iowa State football game.

The trophy bears the name of the Greater Des Moines Athletic Club, which donated the shotput/firewood dealie in 1977, when the football series between the two schools resumed after a 43-year hiatus.

The players don't even notice it. Until you ask them about it.

"They should make it more Iowa," Hawkeyes defensive end Matt Roth said. "Something bronze. A steak. Iowa is known for meat, maybe a steak."

We don't know who exactly to blame for the trophy only a mother could love. We just know that no matter how great the game, grand the effort, the reward is part door stop, part trophy Frankenstein.

The Greater Des Moines Athletic Club no longer exists - and may have existed only long enough to kick in for the trophy - so no one jumps up to claim it.

"I've seen the plaque on the side of it that says `Des Moines Athletic Club,'-" Iowa Athletics Director Bob Bowlsby said. "Don't know if that's a building, an organization or what."

But the Greater Des Moines Athletic sounded cool and at least semi-official back in 1977.

"It's my recollection that it was just a bunch of guys sitting around a bar one night, and they decided the teams ought to play for something," said Buck Turnbull, a sportswriter who covered Iowa college athletics for 41 years (1952-1993) at the Des Moines Register.

"So they dreamed up this Cy-Hawk Trophy. I've only seen it from a distance, but I don't think it's much too look at."

That's one way to put it. Another way is slapped together. And yet another way is ugly.

Flat-out ugly.

"I think that it's safe to say that in all trophy games, it's more about what it stands for," Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said with a laugh. "I don't want to offend anybody, but it's more about what it stands for."

OK, that's Kirk Ferentz being nice. Here's what he said at some point last season.

"When we beat Iowa State two weeks ago, we won this trophy called the Cy-Hawk Trophy," Ferentz said. "Quite honestly, it looks like something that somebody made in their basement. It seems like a Soap Box Derby project or something like that."

Don't take Ferentz's word for it. We went to the experts.

"I've seen worse," said D.J. Carpenter, president of Lucky Awards and Engraving in Cedar Rapids.

JoAnn Schmitt, owner of House of Trophies in Cedar Rapids, prefaced her comments with the

reminder she is an engraver and not a trophy builder. But her shop is filled with trophies. She clearly knows the craft.

"It does look kind of concocted," Schmitt said. "It does look kind of strange. There's a lot of metal and a lot of wood. There's no center to it."

The Iowa players have had the last year to examine the Cy-Hawk, which sits in a glass case in the lobby at the Iowa football complex. The Cyclones held it for five straight years before Iowa won, 40-21, last season at Ames.

The trophy isn't displayed prominently. It's at the end of the main hallway, beyond the Outback Bowl trophy earned last year and a few other bowl trophies.

But it's there.

Players lift weights, they walk past the Cy-Hawk Trophy. They go to meetings, they walk past the Cy-Hawk Trophy. They get their ankles taped, Cy-Hawk Trophy.

The Hawkeyes have had a year to form their opinions.

"I don't think it's a beauty," Roth said. "What is it, just metal?"

Nope, it's a chunk of wood, too.

You have a Heisman-pose guy on the left and a giant football on the right. They're both about the same size, so the trophy doesn't even know what it wants to be.

Is it a running back? Or is it a football? It's a little running back and a giant football.

The wood is covered with gold-colored plates. One for the "Greater Des Moines Athletic Club." One for Cy, the ISU mascot. And one for Herky, the Iowa mascot that hasn't been around since Hayden Fry introduced the Tiger Hawk logo to Iowa football in 1979.

"Someone could spend as much as they wanted to on a trophy like this," said Carpenter, estimating a few thousand dollars for something artistic and unique. "You'd need to go high-end, an artist and a designer."

No artist in 1977. No designer in 1977.

"It's not the prettiest thing, but I guess it's more the meaning of it," junior receiver Ed Hinkel said. "It's more what we play for. It's not the prettiest thing, but we still want to keep it."

And there it is. The trophy doesn't matter. Victory is the thing.

"It can be ugly as long as it's yours," offensive tackle Pete McMahon said. "You don't care what it looks like, as long as it's yours."

Go back one year. The Hawkeyes snapped a five-game losing streak to the Cyclones. Offensive tackle Robert Gallery, a 6-foot-7, 320-pound monster, sprinted to the ISU sidelines to reclaim the Cy-Hawk.

The offensive tackle beat running backs, wide receivers, defensive backs, all his teammates to the gob of metal and wood that is Cy-Hawk.

"When you win (this game), you get a reward for it," Iowa defensive tackle Jonathan Babineaux said. "No matter if it's the Paul Bunyan Ax or the Pig (Floyd of Rosedale) or the Cy-Hawk Trophy, it's going out there and giving it your all in the game.

"It's just the reward you get. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as you get to carry it off the field."

Iowa and Wisconsin are talking about a traveling football trophy for their football series, Bowlsby said. A little more thought likely will go into it than the Cy-Hawk.

The Cy-Hawk doesn't appear to be headed toward retirement. Bowlsby said he's never had a conversation about replacing it.

No matter how cheesy it is.

"Think of the worst thing it could be and we'd like if it was ours," Iowa linebacker Chad Greenway said. "It could be toe cheese for all I care."

Now that's just gross.