Way back in the mid-40s, a lovely girl named Sue was a student at the University of Illinois. During her second year, she had an internship in Chicago, and she met a lot of great people from Northwestern. She decided to transfer to NU.
Sadly, for some, Sue was the only attendee at any of the football games in Champaign while she was there. Her transfer theatened the Illini with their first zero-attendance season since, well, the year before Sue started at U of I. The players and coaches were so disturbed that they challenged Northwestern to a bet: whoever won the next football game would get to keep Sweet Sue.
And so, this young woman became a college football travelling trophy.
More after the jump.
Bad news for Sue? The Illini won here a couple times. Years of sitting in a trophy case in Urbana with only fish flakes to eat (see disturbed players, above) had the inevitable result.
The following year, NU won the rivalry game. When the Cats tried to collect Sue, U of I had to fess up.
"But how about we give you something else?" suggested a team manager. "We've got this tomahawk thing lying around. We stole it from some Indians, and then we used it to threaten them until they taught us their tradtions. Now we misuse those traditions! Isn't that cool?"
The Cats thought that was just fine, and so the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk - jointly named for Sue and the oppressed American Indians - took up it's place as the schools' rivalry trophy.
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