Midwesterners, traditionally speaking, are fairly calm and kind folk. It can take a lot of prodding to elicit an outburst or spark an argument. That said, there are a few things that continue to be a battle waiting to erupt, a constant contentious point even amongst friends.
Do you call it "corn hole" or "bags?"
Did we really need that rain last weekend?
Is it a garage fridge? A beer fridge? Both?
And most importantly: who has the best corn?
Alright, with all of that as preamble, please go shuck off so we can get to this thing. Welcome to Corn Week. Detasseling costs extra.
AlmaOtter
Is this rivalry a real thing?
Well, doesn't everyone hate Iowa? (I kid, I kid. Mostly.) Yeah, it's a thing. It's not necessarily the primarily rivalry for each party (Iowa State or Minnesota for Iowa, probably Oklahoma or Texas for Nebraska?) but there's legitimate disdain here. Even thought it's a quasi-manufactured event following the B1G expansion/arms race, it's still a pretty great event. It tends to be a stand-alone game on Black Friday afternoon, it tends to be a fairly close affair, and Nebraska tends to lose a one-score game in embarrassing or heartbreaking (or both!) fashion.
Where'd you two come from again?
Let's introduce the participants. Iowa, not an OG member, but a joiner early enough that the discrepancy doesn't fully matter. The Hawkeyes joined the club in 1899, just a few years after the initial formation in 1896. With Iowa and Indiana joining just before the turn of the century, the conference became the Big Nine. This was back in the wild and crazy era in which conference names and numbers still had a direct correlation. Strange times.
Nebraska actually tried to join the Big Nine twice in those early, halcyon days! They applied in 1900 and 1911, but were rejected twice. After that, they were founding members of the Big Eight, which you will be shocked to hear was a conferation of eight teams. Seriously, the numbers/names linkage back then was just wild. This grouping eventually became the Big 12 (XII?) in the 1990s with the addition of four Texas schools.
(A slight sidenote. Technically speaking, both Nebraska and Iowa were founding members of the Big 8's progenitor, the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association. Iowa tried to play it both ways and be a member in two conferences at once until 1908.)
You folks got a trophy or some hardware?
They do! It kind of sucks? If the Minnesota/Nebraska $5 and Bits of Broken Chair trophy is the epitome in modern grassroots rivalry hardware, the Iowa/Nebraska Heroes Trophy is probably the definition of corporate blah. It's sponsored by the agribusiness congolomrate Pioneer, itself a subsidiary of Corteva Agriscience, which itself is a spinoff of several divisions following a merger between Dow Chemical and DuPont. You might know Corteva from that time in 2019 when they tried to test a fungicide on a set of beagles, but stopped due to pretty obvious and reasonable outcry.
I digress.
The Pioneer Heroes' Trophy is intended to highlight regular everyday citizen-heroes in Iowa and Nebraska. It's a wonderful sentiment and an honorable thing to do, and it features specific heroes in both states each year. It also lacks any lore, interesting details, or fan creation. It's a good cause. It's not Floyd, or the Bucket, or even the Hat (also a turn of the recent century creation). Iowa and Nebraska deserve better. They deserve something agricultural and grounded, not the agribusiness-branded plaque they get now. They deserve CORN STATUE. I trust our OTR Photoshop experts to figure this out in short order.
Let's get to some numbers. What's the series win-total look like?
First game in 1891! That's impressive. Despite the early start, there are only 56 editions of this classic of the cornfield: 30 Nebraska, 23 Iowa, 6 ties [AO: 3. I'm sure I definitely meant 3 ties. Thank you for highlighting my numerical illiteracy, RMB]. But since Nebby joined the B1G, it's been especially one-sided: 11-4 Iowa from 2011 on. Much like Floyd of Rosedale with Minnesota and the Heartland/Freedom Trophy with Wisconsin, Iowa has benefited from convincing its neighboring states that their rivalry should be protected and played every year.
