A platypus prize and a double-bird salute: Unknown stories and

Nov 21, 2023, 07:00 AM ET Ah, Thanksgiving weekend, when the household gathers around the table and digs into a hodgepodge of traditional family meals that immediately take us back in time by way of taste, smell and the memories to which those feelings are permanently connected.But it is also Competition Week, when college football contests including groups and fan bases who do not especially like each other discover themselves in the midst of a similar holiday experience. When the sights, sounds and sensory overload of being inside a college football stadium likewise unlock to the inmost recesses of our memory banks.And then there is that area in between, where the truly strange and hardly

explainable kick-start the strangest of recollections. You know, like that casserole your Aunt Edith reveals that leaves the family to invest the rest of the afternoon wondering WTH was baked in that CorningWare.Or that jersey number being worn by the guy four rows in front of you, in the colors of thine enemy, that generates stories of seething spitefulness that might just be born in the bizarro world of college football.Or Auntie Edith’s ice box.Or when her sister, Auntie Connie, enters the sherry and starts spinning yarns about your moms and dads that you have actually never heard before. Especially that a person about them throughout Competition Week in the past when they assisted steal State U’s mascot.The untold stories. The ones that offer our lives– and college football– a little extra. That’s what we’re here to show you. The untold stories, obscure information and forgotten bits that make Rivalry Week so unique. Sluggish cooked to excellence over all these years. Like Aunt Edith’s casserole.– Ryan McGee Jump to a section: Ohio State’s double-bird guy Bad blood between the hedges Betting the platypus Deeper than dislike

Buckeyes’double-bird guy Ohio State at Michigan, Saturday, midday ET, Fox Marcus Hall knew everything about the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry long before he became a member of the Buckeyes.A Cleveland native, Hall might state the star players, the Woody Hayes-Bo Schembechler battles, the gold pants custom and the spiciest moments, like the battle between Ohio State’s David Boston and Michigan’s Charles Woodson in 1997.

After signing with Ohio State, Hall could not wait to be part of college football’s highest-profile series.Ten years ago, he unexpectedly carved a location in Ohio State-Michigan lore– with two fingers.The 2013 game pitted the third-ranked Buckeyes, 11-0 that season and 23-0 general under coach Urban Meyer, versus a 7-4 Michigan group at Ann Arbor. Hall, a fifth-year senior, was Ohio State’s

beginning ideal guard. He had begun the previous season against Michigan, assisting the Buckeyes to a win

that capped an ideal first season under Meyer(the group was ineligible for postseason play). “I was nervous as heck, but playing in that game, it resembles, ‘OK, I’m officially a Buckeye,'” Hall said. “That resembles your stamp.”Hall could not await his final go-round in The Game. He remembers the journey up to Michigan and socializing with quarterback Braxton Miller and his other close friends on the group. The pregame environment was “extreme, “as the groups exchanged words in the stadium tunnel.After Michigan took the lead early in the second quarter, Ohio State’s Dontre Wilson returned a kickoff and was dealt with, just to get up surrounded by Wolverines. Pushes and punches taken place, and within seconds, players from both sidelines had gone into the field as flags flew. “I believed it was a bench-clearing brawl,” Hall said.

“I’m like,’I’m absolutely going on this field to secure my guys.’I was an offensive lineman. That’s naturally what we do. I wasn’t going to be the only guy not out there. ” play 1:30 Marcus Hall’s notorious salute to Michigan fans In 2013, Marcus Hall contributed to the OSU-Michigan rivalry tradition by providing a double-finger salute to Michigan fans after getting ejected from the game.The fracas ended up being much tamer than Hall believed and was extinguished within seconds. However after a long huddle by the officiating team, referee Mike Cannon announced the charges, including 3 ejections: Michigan’s Royce Jenkins-Stone, Ohio State’s Wilson and, the last to be called, Hall.Just like that, Hall’s profession in the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry was over.”I didn’t hear anybody in the crowd

, I didn’t hear anything, “Hall said.”All I was thinking was,’It’s my senior year. I’ve eagerly anticipated my senior year playing Michigan for so long. ‘The energy and preparation that enters into that game, you’re so invested in that game. For it to end before halftime, I simply blew up.

“As ABC cameras followed him, Hall threw his helmet down on the Ohio State sideline, kicked a

bench and after that pumped his fist in anger. Then, as he developed into the arena tunnel, he raised both of his middle fingers toward the Big Home crowd. “I compare it to, when you’re fed up on the job and it’s time to go, simply let ’em fly,”Hall said.Hall’s double bird would become the most remarkable minute from the game, which Ohio State won 42-41 after intercepting a 2-point conversion pass attempt with 32 seconds delegated fend off a furious Michigan rally. Other than the ejection itself, Hall stated the worst part of his day was having to stew in the visitors locker room, which had no Televisions and lousy cellular phone reception.Stan Jefferson, Ohio State’s director

of player advancement, accompanied Hall and attempted to soothe him down. Hall kept his uniform on up until the fourth quarter before showering.”My adrenaline was still going, “he stated.”I was attempting to walk out the locker room and see what was going on, but they kept directing me back in. All I might hear were the oohs and ahhs and cheers from the crowd. That just had me on edge.”Hall attempted to track the game on his phone, which began buzzing with notifications as quickly as he returned to the locker room.

The middle-finger moment had gone viral.Although his moms and dads weren’t at Michigan Arena, his uncle and aunt, who had never ever seen him play and aren’t huge sports fans, appeared that day.”They’re the most courteous

, terrific people, spiritual,” Hall remembered, laughing. “After the game, I spoke with them and they resemble blown away, like,’Oh my God, we’ve never seen you imitate that. Are you OK?’I had to soothe them down, let them understand I simply had a moment.”

Hall had never been tossed out of a game before. There had actually been some fights, however mainly in practice. He got a public reprimand from the Big Ten and did not begin in the league championship

game the following week. His moms and dads were encouraging, although they stated he needed to manage his anger. A years after his notorious salute, Marcus Hall still gets a flurry of orders for his Tee shirts this time each year. Thanks To Marcus Hall The double-bird image immediately acquired traction. T-shirts were made showing Hall’s gesture, however since

it was the pre-NIL days, he could not profit. Hall’s lawyer later on contacted the business making the t-shirts and obtained a portion of sales for Hall. Eventually, Hall made his own shirts, complete with his signature at the bottom”to make it more genuine.”He stated he likewise signed”a lot of

photos “revealing his salute.Demand was high initially, and Hall still offers several T-shirts around this time every year. “It was a big minute

in the rivalry,”he said.Hall, who signed with the Indianapolis Colts as an undrafted totally free agent and later on played in the CFL, operated in sales after his playing profession. He lives in the Columbus area, where he has actually worked with youth in group homes and is attempting to become a firemen. Hall tailgates at Ohio State games with former colleagues like Miller and Christian Bryant. He’s thinking about making the trip to Ann Arbor for Saturday’s showdown, 10

years after his significant ejection. “It wasn’t the very best thing for me, however I can be humble and say that rivalry and everything that goes into it, it’s bigger than me, “Hall stated. “It’s been here method before me and it’s going to be here way after me. Just to have a piece in that, I’m grateful. I started more than 30 games at Ohio State, however if my legacy has got to survive on through the rivalry that method, I’m cool with that.”– Adam Rittenberg

Bad blood between the hedges Georgia at Georgia Tech, Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, ABC Given the trajectory of the Georgia and Georgia Tech football programs the previous numerous years, it might be tough to remember the Bulldogs lost to the Yellow Jackets at home in 2016, coach Kirby Smart’s very first season.After the Yellow Jackets rallied from a 13-point deficit in the 2nd half and won 28-27 on Qua Searcy’s 6-yard run and the ensuing extra-point kick with 30 seconds left in the regular-season finale, numerous Tech players– as had actually ended up being something of a custom– celebrated by taking home a memento from the well-known hedges surrounding the playing field at Sanford Arena in Athens, Georgia. There was no eluding in 2016 as Georgia Tech’s P.J. Davis celebrated with a piece of Sanford Arena’s well known hedges

in his mouth. Jeffrey Vest/Icon Sportswire Shortly thereafter, then-Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity and then-Tech equivalent Todd Stansbury agreed the damage needed to stop. Bulldogs players had actually been striking back by taking home chunks of the natural-grass grass at Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium.The rivalry, long known as” Tidy, Old-Fashioned Hate,” was getting a little ugly when it came to vandalizing arenas.” It was backward and forward between the hedges and thegrass at Tech,”McGarity informed ESPN last week. “We called each other and stated the time to ruin each other’s facility needs to come to an end. We both agreed it required to stop. Kirby was adamant that we do not do that anymore, that’s not going to occur. It didn’t help the competition at all. All it did was add fuel to the fire.” Editor’s Picks 2 Associated Tech players had actually been taking home parts of UGA’s hedges returning to a 35-18 triumph over the Bulldogs on Dec. 1, 1984. Yellow Jackets quarterback John Dewberry, a transfer from Georgia, broke off a piece of the Chinese privet hedges and clenched it between his teeth for photographers.Tech players haphazardly pruned the hedges 6 more times over the next 32 seasons, consisting of in 2016, when the hedges were especially damaged.”They were mangled,” stated McGarity, now president and CEO of Gator Bowl Sports in Jacksonville, Florida. “Because it was the last game of the season, it didn’t do irreversible damage. Those hedges grow back so fast. It was

simply the symbolic gesture of defacing them. I make sure Tech was irritated when Georgia players collected a few of the natural turf on their field.”Georgia has security officers safeguarding the exterior of the hedges from visiting fans who may desire a keepsake, however McGarity said he didn’t believe it was a great idea to have officers surrounding the interior perimeter.

“You didn’t want to have a situation where police was getting included with players,”McGarity said.”That would be the story the next day.

We basically safeguarded the outside from the fans. That’s what we concentrated on– preventing fans from harming the hedges since we might control that.”Obviously, beating the Yellow Jackets in your home fixes the problem for the Bulldogs. Georgia has actually won 18 of the previous 21 games in the rivalry going into Saturday’s game in Atlanta. The Bulldogs have likewise won each of their previous 25 games at Sanford Arena,

the longest active home winning streak in the SEC.– Mark Schlabach Playing for the platypus Oregon State at Oregon, Friday, 8:30 p.m., Fox The front page of the Eugene Register-Guard on Nov. 20, 1959, trumpeted two new additions to the festivities surrounding the next day’s football game between Oregon and competing Oregon State. It was likewise homecoming

weekend, and about 50 freshmen from what was then called Oregon State College planned a run from Corvallis to Eugene, though it’s not clear if they made the whole 40-plus-mile trek.The 2nd addition was the unveiling of a competition trophy. “Other conventional college competitors have’ little brown jugs’or’ old oaken pails ,’however there has never been a trophy for the UO-OSC’civil war,'”Richard Baker composed in the newspaper.So, naturally, the Platypus Prize–” with the head and expense of a duck and the tail of a beaver”– filled the void. Oregon student Warren Spady sculpted the trophy from maple, and for 3 years, it was awarded to the winner of the game: Oregon State in 1959 and 1961; Oregon in 1960. And after that, like that, it was gone.For 4 years, the Platypus Prize faded from public consciousness. Legend has it that it was taken in the early ’60s and reappropriated as a water polo prize. Spady informed the Register-Guard in 2007 that in 1986 he saw the prize in a glass case at Oregon’s Leighton Swimming pool, however the full route of its journey following Oregon State’s football win in 1961 is finest delegated the imagination.Presenting …

The Platypus Cup”It’s this ideal mix of half Beaver and

half Duck prize that can represent us.”-@joey3harrington Thoughts on renaming the rivalry game to the Platypus Cup? pic.twitter.com/JvlWtfmlgn!.?.!— Talkin ‘Ducks (@talkinducksshow)November 23, 2021 It wasn’t up until

2004, thanks to a column from John Canzano, composing for the Oregonian, that the prize’s presence was thrust back into the public eye. Like the Register-Guard story from 45 years earlier, Canzano’s column kept in mind the unusual absence of a trophy for a college football rivalry game, just for him to be informed after publication that as soon as upon a time one did exist. And it still might.So, in the very same year”National Treasure “hit theaters, the search was on. The trophy was finally located in 2005 in a storage closet, and considering that 2007 has actually been entrusted to the winning school’s alumni association for safekeeping after every Oregon-Oregon State football game.On Oregon’s student alumni association website, the Platypus Trophy is

20 and New Year’s Six-dreaming Mountaineers with a 24-21 win in Boone, North Carolina. There has been a quartet of games in which the No. 1-ranked FCS team was disturbed. There was GSU over ASU in 2007, simply 7 weeks after App State’s legendary defeat of Michigan. There was even a game in 2015 that was interrupted by a laser tip from the stands, a fire alarm in a dorm surrounding to Kidd Maker Arena and a stolen ambulance.But the roots of the title that has been bestowed upon this series–“A Feeling Deeper Than Hate”– reach back to Dec. 5, 1987, the schools’first post-World War II meeting. It was the FCS(then I-AA)quarterfinals. The Eagles were the two-time defending national champs, coached by College Football Hall of Famer Erk Russell, who made national prestige as Georgia’s defensive organizer under Vince Dooley. Erk was the godfather of the legendary Junkyard Dawgs and left Athens for Statesboro to help Georgia Southern reboot its program. Using the brain inside his popular bald head(which he consistently headbutted his helmeted players with, leaving a path of blood trickling down his face at kickoff), Russell won quickly, posting a set of 13-2 seasons that caused those nattys.When Georgia Southern got here in Boone for the 2nd round of the NCAA I-AA playoffs in 1987, the Eagles were greeted by an 11-2 Mountaineers team helmed by future South Carolina head coach Sparky Woods. They were likewise welcomed by snow. A great deal of snow. And under that powder was an absolutely frozen playing field.For three hours, both teams slipped and moved, but App State discovered much better footing in the house and pulled off a 19-0 win. App State trainees rubbed ice into the wound during the second half when they used their boots and gloves to engrave a snowy hill overlooking one end zone with a message: CAN YOU SCORE?A group of angry Southern fans stormed the hill and fired up a snowcapped brawl. When police stepped in, one officer pulled a move worthwhile of the “Home Alone “Wet Bandits on the cellar stairs, lost his footing and moved down the hill to crash into a sideline fence.It was the only time Russell, who added a third and final nationwide title in 1989, ever coached versus Appalachian State. Even now, after all these years and all the games the Eagles and Mountaineers have played, through FCS playoffs, the Southern Conference and now the FBS and the Sun Belt, App State fans still like to irritate GSU followers by

grinding up that Erk stat. On the other hand, every few years Georgia Southern fans still file petitions to the NCAA to have that 1987 Ice Bowl reclassified as a hockey game.– Ryan McGee

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