It’s by nature that college football that rivalry games have more juice to them than your ordinary matchup, especially when there’s a prize waiting at the end.
The instant the annual Wisconsin vs. Minnesota
game is decided, the victorious players are on the prowl for Paul Bunyan’s Axe, sprinting with 40-yard dash-like speed toward the object so they can hoist it in celebration. There’s the Keg of Nails. The Little Brown Jug. The Golden Hat. The Iron Skillet. The Bones. No matter the seemingly random form it takes, if it’s designated as a rivalry trophy, the players are that much more motivated to claim it.
When Jeff Compher took over as the Northern Illinois University athletic director in 2008, one of his first missions was manufacturing a coveted prize his school could chase every year on the gridiron.
Northern Illinois’ history with the Mid-American Conference is complicated. The school was a late arrival to the MAC in 1975, then exited the league to become independent in 1986. After a brief flirtation with the Big West Conference, the Huskies rejoined the MAC in 1997, but their constant fluctuations prevented a true-blue conference rivalry from transpiring.
So eventually, the question became: who was Northern Illinois’ natural enemy?
Geography suggested the Ball State Cardinals were the most seamless fit, lying one state eastward and similarly devoid of an overbearing rival. Thus, Compher contacted local artist Reneé Bemis with the request of sculpting a trophy NIU’s players could proudly hoist after victories over Ball State.
“He said, ‘We want to do something that relates to both Ball State and NIU,’” Bemis recalled in a brainstorming meeting with Compher and members of the NIU athletic department. “I was joking because they’re both in corn country, and I said, you mean, ‘Like a corn stalk?’ And they said, ‘Exactly!’ I was kind of kidding, but they said, ‘That’d be great!’”
And that is how the Bronze Stalk was born.
Bemis previously designed trophies for fishing tournaments and similar events, but this was her first stab at a collegiate rivalry trophy. Her work is visible on Northern Illinois’ campus beyond the Bronze Stalk, as she also sculpted several statues outside of Huskie Stadium, including a trio of huskies and former NIU live mascot Diesel who was renowned for his high-fiving ability.
For the Bronze Stalk, Bemis cut down a real life corn stalk and used it as a basis for the trophy design. It was cast in bronze using the lost-wax method. In other words, Bemis crafted the sculptured in clay to create a mold, poured wax into the mold, and then the wax was cast into bronze. The wooden trophy base was then modeled so that the Huskie head logo adorned one side and the Cardinal head graced the other. Thus when the winner displayed the trophy in a case, its logo would always be visible. The sculpting required one month of work, while the welding, chasing, and coloring at the foundry was roughly a six-month process.
“I don’t want to say it was easy, because that’s not really it,” Bemis said. “But it was pretty straightforward because I knew what to go with between their logos. I had to make sure they looked like good logos. And then there was the corn stalk, I had to make it look nice — not just straight, but with some bent leaves. We drive by them every day in DeKalb.”
Bemis attended the 2008 contest where the 33-inch tall, 30-pound trophy debuted. Ball State became the first of the newfound MAC rivals to celebrate with her artwork, handling NIU in 45-14 fashion. The Huskies snatched the Bronze Stalk the following year in DeKalb and refused to let go, maintaining it for 10-straight meetings ranging from 2009-18. Ball State finally got its lick back with five of six wins in the 2019-24 span, keeping the trophy contained in Muncie, IN for the majority of the current decade.
After both teams earned a share of opportunities to lift the trophy, Saturday, Oct. 25 marked the final installment of the Bronze Stalk rivalry. Like many regional rivalries such as the Bedlam Series between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, the cause of its demise was the usual suspect: conference realignment.
Northern Illinois is bound for the Mountain West on July 1, 2026, while Ball State remains in the MAC, making the 285 miles of separation feel like four times the distance as they are removed from each other’s annual schedules.
“It’s sad,” Bemis said. “I’m happy for NIU because I think they’re doing what’s best for the athletic department. I’m sad that the rivalry trophy is over. I don’t know who gets it. I don’t know if the team that (won Saturday) gets to keep it for good. I don’t know how that works. It’s sad that it’s over, but I was glad to be a part of the rivalry… But I would do another one if they wanted it — if they found a rivalry in the Mountain West — although I don’t know how they’re gonna do that.”
Thus, the Week 9 showdown between the MAC rivals came with heightened importance, as the series was knotted at 25-25-2 leading into the contest. Northern Illinois, the school which initially proposed the idea of the rivalry trophy, reclaimed the Bronze Stalk for the first time since 2021 and settled the ultimate tiebreaker at 26-25-2.
The instant the Huskies’ 21-7 victory was cemented into the DeKalb scoreboard on Saturday, a horde of black jerseys, led by defensive tackle Dasean Dixon, immediately made a beeline to lift the glorified plant, commencing a lively celebration.
“We’ve been missing you, man. Welcome home, for now and forever,” NIU team captain Jalonnie Williams can be heard saying in a video posted by the team’s athletic department. “For now and forever, you’ll be ours.”
Subsequently in a locker room celebration where the trophy served as the centerpiece, head coach Thomas Hammock declared to the team: “We will never give it back.”
Not all rivalries are final when teams separate conferences. Former Big East arch rivals Pitt and West Virginia renewed their Backyard Brawl in 2021 and have battled on an annual basis since. Kansas and Missouri settled their differences and played the Border War earlier this season for the first time since 2011.
Given the significance of the trophy for both fanbases, the question at the top of everyone’s mind now is: will the Bronze Stalk ever see the light of day again, or will it collect dust on a shelf on NIU’s historical trophy case inside the Yordon Center?
When asked about the future of the Bronze Stalk postgame, Northern Illinois quarterback Josh Holst quipped, “they won’t play us,” while Coach Hammock followed with saying, “That’s up to John Cheney.”
Cheney, the deputy athletic director at Northern Illinois, hints at the possibility of the trophy returning to use, stating his intent to focus on regional non-conference games when the Huskies become a geographic outlier in the Mountain West.
“There are currently no games scheduled with Ball State in the near future, through 2030,” Cheney said. “As we look at our non-conference scheduling, NIU will be focusing on more regional teams when possible and Ball State would fall into that category. If it makes sense for both of our school’s scheduling, we definitely would look at scheduling games to keep the rivalry going.”
Ball State athletic director Jeff Mitchell responded with a similar outlook on the rivalry, also emphasizing the concept of geographic fit.
“We are interested in scheduling future non-conference football games with NIU,” Mitchell said. “The prospect of future games makes a lot of sense given the competitive history of the rivalry and the geographic regionality of the two institutions.”
So maybe it’s not a matter of goodbye for the Bronze Stalk after all… Perhaps it’s a ‘til we meet again.
