It's Land Grant Week!

Hey look, we're only a day late with the intro this time around! By Corn Week, this thing will be a well-oiled machine. This week, we delve deep into the rivalry and the trophy that launched a thousand memes: Michigan State and Penn State's Land Grant Trophy. Roll that beautiful bean footage.

Simply stunning. It looks like an Ikea Billy bookcase that won the lottery. It looks like a begrudging Boy Scout badge-winning project in woodworking. It could replace the anvil in any old-school cartoon and easily smush someone like an accordion. It looks like it was built to withstand gale force tornado winds rolling off the prairie. It's a stocky mf-er.

Let's hit the schedule again and we'll dive into the rivalry below the fold.

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Is this rivalry a real thing?

Maybe if you squint really hard? It was played every year from 1993 until 2023, which is a fairly impressive run. It's got a trophy (more on that below). Both teams had impressive stretches of dominance, iconic players, and (in)famous coaches in that 30 year run. But comparing the hate that Michigan State fans feel towards the Nittany Lions and what they seethe towards Michigan? No contest. And former PSU coach James Franklin literally built a program around the concept of #Unrivaled. This rates higher than the Maryland-Rutgers rivalry that we discussed last week, but in that case, the bar's in hell. In sum: it's kind of A Thing.

Where'd you two come from again?

Yeah, hey! When did you interlopers get here? While Penn State is famously the 11th member of the Big Ten, Michigan State was the 10th joiner (if you ignore UChicago, and we always do). Some might even consider the twosome to be the OG expansion schools (some might also like to avoid fighting with Spartan fans online). When UChicago left the conference in 1946 after decades of getting their shit kicked by all of the other teams (including Northwestern!), several applicants requested to join the now-Big Nine. In 1948, Michigan State won out over Nebraska and Pittsburgh and became the official 10th in the Big Ten. Jump forward nearly a half-century ahead and the clean and simple 10 teams was forever altered when the Nittany Lions joined the fray. Shoutout to the 11 hidden in the Big Ten logo, which remains one of my favorite pieces of lore.

You folks got a trophy or some hardware?

Yeah, let's get to it. As part of Penn State's 1993 addition to the conference, then-MSU coach George Perles decided to get creative. (A long parenthetical here: Perles was a through and through Spartan. Went to the Army after high school, played for legendary Spartan football coach Duffy Daugherty, coached the Spartans defensive line for a decade, did the same with the Pittsburgh Steelers, then returned to East Lansing for a decade as head coach and sometimes-AD. He died of Parkinson's in 2020. Fuck that evil disease.)

Perles designed and built the trophy himself as a nod to Penn State and Michigan State's status as two of the earliest schools affiliated with the Morrill Land Grant Act (yes, a majority of the other schools are also Land Grant schools. Let's not ruin this for him). To celebrate this, he appears to have taken a large and misshapen block of wood, added a generic football trophy statuette to the top, then glued on a few representations of the two campuses, including literal framed photos of various academic buildings. It's ... yeah. It's an acquired taste.

Let's get to some numbers. What's the series win-total look like?

Fairly even! Penn State leads with 20 wins overall, while MSU has 18 (and there's one tie in 1948). It's a little more one-sided in conference play, with Penn State holding 19 wins to Michigan State's 10.

We'll have more through the week on this historic rivalry, recaps of last year's squads, and what the Nittany Lions and Spartans can hope for this coming season.