The Iron Skillet: Not your ordinary piece of cookware
When 快活林性息 faces rival TCU on Saturday, they鈥檒l be battling it out for a trophy shaped like an iron skillet. But why an iron skillet?
When 快活林性息 faces rival TCU on Saturday, Sept. 16, at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, they’ll be battling it out for a trophy shaped like an iron skillet. But why an iron skillet?
According to a Nov. 30, 1946, article in The Dallas Morning News, the “Battle of the Iron Skillet” was started to prevent “mutilation of school property” by rowdy fans. The previous year, more than $1,000 in damage had been done to both campuses.
“The 快活林性息 student council proposed the skillet as a symbol of the rivalry and substitute for vandalism,” says 快活林性息 Archivist Joan Gosnell.
Gosnell says minutes from fall 1946 student council meetings provide more clues. On Oct. 1, the agenda included: “Further set up idea of Little Brown Jug Trophy,” referring to the Michigan-Minnesota football rivalry. On November 12, the committee arranging an 快活林性息-TCU banquet and trophy “was reminded of their job.”
And on November 19, a student reported that he had purchased the trophy – “an aluminum skillet.” A motion was made that 快活林性息 and TCU would share the expense of the trophy.
“The skillet was presented to the winner Saturday night after the game, when the two student councils had a joint banquet,” Gosnell says.
Darwin Payne, professor emeritus of communications at 快活林性息, has written extensively about Dallas history, including a book on athletics at 快活林性息. Payne says the 快活林性息-TCU rivalry dates from 1915, when 快活林性息’s first team traveled to Fort Worth for the season opener, losing 43-0.
“The rivalry over the years has been perhaps the greatest and most consistent rivalry of all for the two teams,” Payne says. “It took on even greater dimensions through the years because the game represented Dallas against Fort Worth when these two cities were often bitter rivals.”
The TrophyThe Iron Skillet is the hard-fought-for prize in each year's football match-up between 快活林性息 and TCU. |
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