INDIANAPOLIS — From a basement in central Iowa two days after Thanksgiving, Iowa cornerback Riley Moss and several of his teammates and family members sat around a bar and watched Minnesota and Wisconsin battle for Paul Bunyan’s Axe.

There was more at stake that day than just an iconic traveling trophy. Thanks to Iowa’s come-from-behind win against Nebraska on Black Friday, a Gophers victory would send Iowa to Indianapolis. A Gophers loss would earn Wisconsin a trip to the Big Ten championship.

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Usually in the Big Ten’s northwest triangle of hate, rooting interests start and end with hoping the other two teams perform well in bowl action for conference pride. This time, Iowa players and fans had no qualms in cheering for their most-played rival. Moss and his father, Mark, rowed the boat after the Gophers stunned the Badgers 23-13. The Big Ten’s Defensive Back of the Year, who has intercepted Minnesota quarterbacks four times in his career, then heaped praise upon Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck and receiver Chris Autman-Bell on Twitter.

For the Gophers, it served as an odd juxtaposition. Their two biggest rivals are Wisconsin and Iowa. No major-college teams have played as often as Minnesota-Wisconsin with 131 meetings. The Gophers and Hawkeyes have met 115 times and have perhaps more contentious moments than any other two Big Ten programs. Had Nebraska held on to upset Iowa, the Axe winner would have qualified for the Big Ten title game. Instead, by toppling one rival, the Gophers provided unbridled joy for the other.

“We knew,” said Minnesota cornerback Tyler Nubin, who watched the Iowa-Nebraska game from the team hotel. “All we were focused on was getting the Axe. We knew the Big Ten championship wasn’t in sight anymore.”

Meet me in Indy! #gohawks #fightforiowa #swarmlife #rowtheboat

— Gary Koerner (@koerner_gary) November 28, 2021

Minnesota and Wisconsin first met on a football field in 1890. The Gophers and Hawkeyes opened their series the next year, while Iowa-Wisconsin squared off for the first time in 1894. Minnesota and Wisconsin became Big Ten Conference charter members in 1896, while Iowa followed in 1899. Their collective history first as combined territories, then as Upper Midwest states, coupled with agricultural, mostly German heritage and border waterways connect the trio in an inseparable way. Those shared ecosystems have led to three of college football’s most intense — and perhaps undervalued — rivalries.

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“This is part of college football, man,” Nubin said. “They don’t like us. We don’t like them, and it’s how it’s gonna be.”

“It’s fun to have those games,” said Wisconsin quarterback Graham Mertz, whose father, Ron, was a Minnesota letterman in 1989-90. “Obviously, you love the tradition of them.”

Future in peril?

As the Big Ten decides how it will apply future scheduling with the addition of USC and UCLA, there’s a chance one of these rivalries will cycle off the annual schedule. It’s likely that Minnesota-Wisconsin is safe and probably Minnesota-Iowa. The one in danger is Iowa-Wisconsin, which always finds itself battling for annual relevance amid Big Ten expansions.

The Hawkeyes and Badgers, whose campuses are separated by 175 miles, have played 95 times. They are the most successful West Division programs during the past two decades. The Badgers join Ohio State as the only Big Ten schools with 200 wins since 2000, and Wisconsin ranks second in league wins during that span. Iowa sits fifth in overall wins and fourth in Big Ten victories. The Badgers and Hawkeyes occupy the same league positions (Iowa is fifth in Big Ten wins) since Nebraska joined the league in 2011. Since the geographic split in 2014, Wisconsin and Iowa are second and third, respectively, in Big Ten and overall victories. Each program has five top-10 finishes since 2000.

Both programs are built with similar principles and place a premium on line-of-scrimmage play, powerful running games and high-level defense. It doesn’t always lead to eye-pleasing offensive football, but it does generate success. And since Kirk Ferentz became Iowa’s head coach in 1999, only twice has the team rushing for the fewest yards won a Badgers-Hawkeyes game.

“When you play Wisconsin, you know that they’re gonna run the ball down your throat, and they’re gonna try to physically outwork you,” said Iowa linebacker Jack Campbell, the Big Ten’s preseason Defensive Player of the Year. “You’re gonna play Wisconsin, the rivalry that comes along with that, but then knowing that the ball is gonna be ran every single time, it’s gonna be downhill football. So that’s something special.”

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The feeling is mutual.

“That’s a big-time game,” Wisconsin linebacker Nick Herbig said. “I’d play them twice if we could.”

Despite the teams’ proximity to one another, their shared success and physical tenets, their rivalry somehow gets shelved during realignment. When Penn State joined the Big Ten in 1993, Iowa-Wisconsin fell off one another’s schedules for the first time since 1936. Wisconsin head coach Barry Alvarez, who assisted Iowa’s Hayden Fry from 1979-86, was shocked by how that series became expendable. After a two-year period, the 11-team Big Ten revamped its schedules with every team securing two permanent rivals and then playing the remaining teams six times in an eight-year period. Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa all protected one another.

With an unbalanced number of teams, Iowa-Minnesota no longer became a designated season finale and Wisconsin sometimes filled that gap. In 2004, the Badgers and Hawkeyes met at Kinnick Stadium with a Big Ten title share at stake. Iowa’s 30-7 win gave Ferentz a piece of the championship for the second time in three seasons. In 2010, they played in one of the Big Ten’s greatest games, which involved 30 NFL Draft picks — including five first-rounders — and featured eight lead changes in a 31-30 Wisconsin win.

That game provided the rivalry’s climax following divisional deliberations. With Nebraska joining the league in 2011, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany chose competitive equality as the divisional separator, rather than geography. He split Ohio State and Penn State from Michigan and Nebraska, then divided Iowa from Wisconsin into three equal divisions. Each school received one cross-divisional rival. But with both schools’ long-standing series with Minnesota, something had to give.

Alvarez, who by then was Wisconsin’s athletic director, twice argued with Delany — the second time forcefully — to protect the Iowa-Wisconsin series. It all was for naught.

“Back in the Legends and Leaders divisions we lost Iowa,” said Alvarez, who now serves as a special adviser to Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren. “That’s not fair for our fans. It wasn’t fair for us. It’s an easy drive, and it was an easy game for them to get to. We lost that for a few years, and that was sad.”

After two years away, the teams met in a non-divisional game in 2013. The following year, the Big Ten added Maryland and Rutgers and chose to divide by geography. Wisconsin and Iowa were placed in the same division. They since have captured six (Wisconsin with four) of the eight West Division titles. In 2019, Wisconsin stopped Iowa quarterback Nate Stanley 3 inches short of the goal line on a two-point conversion attempt to preserve a 24-22 win. The Badgers won the West title by one game over Iowa after both had beaten Minnesota.

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“To not play them, it would definitely be disheartening because that’s taking away an experience for not only us, but from our fans for those that love watching us play them and their fans watching them play us,” Iowa safety Kaevon Merriweather said. “Hopefully, the Big Ten will be able to allow us to keep those games, the games that mean something to us programs.”

Northwest triangle of hate

Critiques about the Big Ten’s divisions have surged since 2014. In regular-season action, the competitive level is on par with the East leading the West 77-70 in eight seasons. Iowa and Wisconsin have held their own against East Division teams, ranking second and fifth, respectively, in Big Ten crossover winning percentage. But Ohio State’s dominance (61-5 overall, 18-2 against the West) coupled with the East’s 8-0 record in championship games (Ohio State has won five) has given way to a more equitable path for all teams to reach Indianapolis and the College Football Playoff.

When the NCAA rescinded its requirement for leagues to play either a round-robin or compete in divisions in order to stage a championship game, Big Ten administrators all responded favorably to a non-divisional structure. With USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten in 2024, league officials have discussed future scheduling parameters but have yet to reach a final decision.

A 3-6-6 plan would allow each school to play three teams annually and the other 12 twice in a four-year period. If the league allowed schools to protect two opponents, they would face the others seven times in 13 seasons.

Iowa’s situation is unusual because it now has three primary Big Ten rivals. Nebraska and Iowa have met every year on Black Friday, and last year’s game provided the highest ratings of any game in BTN history. Even though the Cornhuskers have struggled in recent years, they have a passionate fan base and a voice that matters in Big Ten circles.

Still, the northwest triangle of hate shares a history that spills across three centuries. Iowa and Minnesota have played annually for Floyd of Rosedale, a 98-pound bronze pig, since 1935. It was designed to ease relations between the programs and fan bases after Iowa Gov. Clyde Herring was quoted as saying, “If the officials stand for any rough tactics like Minnesota used last year, I’m sure the crowd won’t.” Minnesota Gov. Floyd Olson bet Herring a live pig to diffuse a potentially explosive situation, and it worked.

Wisconsin and Iowa compete for the Heartland Trophy, which features a brass bull. Paul Bunyan’s Axe replaced a Slab of Bacon, which went missing from 1945 until it was discovered at Camp Randall Stadium storage room in 1994.

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At Iowa, younger players are nominated to research and deliver a speech on rivalry games during team meetings. Fleck discusses each rivalry in detail in that week’s first meeting. During Floyd week, players and fans eat bacon or other pork products every day. If Iowa wins, the players engage in a hog roast the following night. Often the trophies move from display cases to weight rooms or practice fields. And team officials are not above riling up their players with “On Wisconsin,” “The Minnesota Rouser” or “The Iowa Fight Song,”

“The hate honestly grows during the week,” Merriweather said. “I don’t know if anybody else does this, but like our strength staff, they play their fight song throughout the whole week in the locker room. And I tell you, it’s the most irritating thing in the world. I feel like you have no choice but to hate the team that you’re playing because you don’t want to hear that fight song when it comes to Saturday.”

“There are signs everywhere,” Nubin said. “We play the music at practice. It’s just intense. And the buildup is what really drives that game. It’s just awesome. I’m blessed I can be a part of that rivalry and say that I was a part of that story.”

No matter the opponent or the season, Gophers fans chant, “Who Hates Iowa? We Hate Iowa!” and “Fuck the Badgers, clap–clap–clapclapclap” at every sporting event. In 2018, Minnesota players flooded the air inside Camp Randall Stadium’s visiting locker room with nauseating levels of Axe Body Spray to leave their scent behind.

Before Highway 151 became a four-lane throughway from eastern Iowa through southern Wisconsin, Badgers fans would clog the streets of Dickeyville, Wis., to honk their horns and hold signs like “Go Home Chicken Hawks” when Hawkeye buses rolled through town. In 2002, thousands of Iowa fans tore down Minnesota’s goal posts and tried to take them out of the Metrodome and into downtown Minneapolis.

“You’re just in a small part of such a bigger game that’s been played for so long,” Minnesota linebacker Mariano Sori-Marin said. “Obviously, the trophy games are moments and memories that you’ll have the rest of your life whether you win or lose them.”

“When you learn about history like that, you kind of get a sense like you’re playing for more than just this present-time game; you’re playing for all the Iowa Hawkeyes in the past, and they’re playing for all the past Gophers,” Campbell said. “It’s a little bit deeper meaning than just the present game.”

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“Once I started playing, and I kind of got into it, I was like, ‘This is deeper than it looks,’” said Herbig, a Hawaii native. “Like the battle for the Axe, for the pig, all that stuff is real, man.”

Alvarez once again could represent the last best chance at extending all three rivalries. He reiterated rivalry preservation should be paramount in deciding future schedules. He called Iowa cycling off Wisconsin’s schedule in 2011-12 “terrible for our fans” and added, “I hope we don’t have to go through that again.”

As to how he would shape future schedules, Alvarez said, “I’ll tell the commissioner my preference when the time comes.”

Maybe this time, Alvarez can win the scheduling battle before it is lost.

(Top photo: Jeff Hanisch / USA Today)