UMass and UConn were all set up for the big one. The two programs played 77 times before, but this was the first time that a trophy sponsored by an NIL collective would be on the line. Sure, UConn was 7-4 coming into the game and UMass was 2-9. But with UMass moving to the MAC next season, it might be the last time these two teams played for a while. And there was a brand-new trophy to fight for. This had all the makings of a classic.
Players were aware of the significance. “I did see it on social media,” UConn offensive lineman Chase Lundt, a sixth-year senior, told the Hartford Courant about the trophy. “Pretty neat. It would be cool if we could get something like that.”
It’s unclear if it was due to the neat new trophy or the magical 78th game in the rivalry, but the teams did end up playing a thriller! UConn topped UMass, 47-42, in a game where the Huskies didn’t take the lead for good until late in the third quarter. UConn’s win tied up the series all time, 38-38-2.
The victors were a worthy winner of the first-ever (flips to new tab in browser) Southwick Jug trophy, sponsored by UMass’s Midnight Ride Collective. The collective shared an explanation: The trophy refers to the Southwick Jog, the two-mile strip between Connecticut and Massachusetts where the border dips south. The trophy featured an antique bean crock for Massachusetts and two charter oaks for Connecticut. Pretty neat.
But no one on UConn got to hold that cool trophy postgame. No one else did, either. The Southwick Jug was not presented to the Huskies. Midnight Ride had left the presentation to UMass, writing beforehand that co-founders Corey Schneider and Tim McDermond would not even be at the game. “Hopefully a meaningful presentation of it has been planned,” Schneider wrote. “Not up to us tho.”
One person who did want the trophy was UConn head coach Jim Mora, the former Falcons, Seahawks, and UCLA coach and son of the more famous Jim “Playoffs?!” Mora. Mora responded to tweets from 247Sports’ Fight Massachusetts, which had reported UMass wouldn’t acknowledge the trophy and had asked UConn to keep quiet about it.
“This is 100% false,” Mora tweeted. “I specifically asked for the trophy at the end of the game and I was told point blank you folks weren’t giving it up.” Trophy?! Media at the game were befuddled, too. “The Southwick Jug was never seen at McGuirk Alumni stadium,” the Courant’s Dom Amore wrote.
The story has spiraled in the days following Saturday’s game, and not just because Mora has since won two Coach of the Year awards. The two schools issued a joint statement on Sunday explaining why the trophy wasn’t handed out, most of which resolved to there being insufficient time to design a marketing campaign around it:
Regarding yesterday's football game and fan interest in presenting a trophy to the winner, prior to the game the two schools had not discussed awarding the trophy to the winning team or using the trophy in general as a symbol of our long-standing series.
The trophy was provided to Mass for the first time earlier in the week, not leaving a lot of time to properly consider an official name, secure a mutually beneficial sponsor or execute a marketing plan. In addition, series results still need to be added to the base of the trophy. Both schools agree that celebrating our 78-game rivalry series requires appropriate planning.
The football collectives for each school have now asked for the trophy so they may award it to Coach Mora and his team. We have no issue with this plan and for now, will consider the trophy property of the two collectives to be used at their direction.
This all makes sense. The teams can’t just have the Southwick Jug; it would be unfair to them. It must be the Southwick Jug Presented By Ocean Twist Spiked Fruit Punch, or it won’t mean as much to the players. The UConn NIL Collective has since been able to gain possession of the unsponsored trophy, and plans to present it to the team at some point.
It is fitting that UConn now finds themselves on the wrong end of a weird rivalry trophy controversy, as it once came up with one of its own. Central Florida joined the American Athletic Conference in 2013 and routed UConn, then also a member of the league, in the teams’ first meeting. But after a Huskies upset over UCF in 2014, new coach Bob Diaco decided this was a new rivalry game. He called it “Civil conFLiCT,” and the team even made a trophy for it! That went un-awarded too, but this time by choice: When UCF beat UConn the following season, the team just left the trophy on the field. A year ago, The Athletic’s Chris Vannini attempted to unravel the mystery of the trophy’s whereabouts. He found it, but there remains some intrigue: The font is different on the trophy he touched than it was on the one abandoned on the field years ago.
This time it’s UMass with an embarrassing trophy snafu, and there might be an obvious reason why it wasn’t awarded. Late last month, the Massachusetts Daily Collegian’s Mike Maynard reported, football players were told the Midnight Ride Collective would be ending at season’s end. The school would have some sort of NIL deal, of course, but was cutting out Midnight Ride. The NIL collective announced its trophy on Nov. 25; the Collegian reported Midnight Ride was out on Nov. 27. Great timing!
UMass had already fired football coach Don Brown earlier in November. One person unhappy with that was Brown’s wife, Deborah, who tweeted there was a major disparity in NIL dollars between the Minutemen and their opponents: “The combination of NIL money of the teams UMass played this season is a combined $48,798,653 million dollars to our $36,000. And we played how many teams so close?!”
Wow. There sure is a lot going on here. This is a tale worthy of a few lines of verse.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the Midnight Ride Collective’s fear
30th of November, UMass and UConn
The Southwick Jug would already be gone
Did not have a sponsor, not even a beerChase Lundt told the paper, “It’d be neat.”
The trophy should go to the winning team
Sadly it was not even there, it did seem
But UConn would get it from the team they beat—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And on the opposite shore Jim Mora would be
Ready to take it, put it under his wing
And give it to his 8-4 team on the upswing
This was no Civil conFLiCT, it was a real thing
