WHERE IS THE LITTLE BROWN JUG?
An Inside the Pack investigation into the largest conspiracy in South Dakota college football history.
In 1927, a Vermillion jeweler named Roy C. Davis donated a trophy for the South Dakota–South Dakota State football rivalry.
Engraved on the front were four simple words:
“TRY AND GET IT.”
Nearly 100 years later, those words have apparently become official SDSU university policy.
Because nobody seems able to tell us where the damn thing is.
And after comments made Monday by SDSU head coach Dan Jackson, we’re beginning to think this goes all the way to the top.
A Century of History. Gone.
South Dakota and South Dakota State first met on the football field in 1889.
That’s 137 years of history and 120 meetings between two schools separated by about 115 miles of South Dakota highway.
In 1927, Davis decided the rivalry needed something more tangible than bragging rights.
He created the Roy C. Davis Little Brown Jug, a traveling trophy that would belong to the winner until the next meeting.
Naturally, South Dakota won the inaugural Jug game 16-12.
For the next four decades, the Jug was a fixture of the rivalry. Newspapers wrote about it, winning scores were engraved on it, and players understood what it meant to bring the thing home.
This wasn’t some promotional trophy invented by a marketing department last Tuesday.
It’s one of the older rivalry trophies in college football.
Older than the Floyd of Rosedale, the Little Brown Stein and several other famous trophies that still get celebrated today.
But when SDSU moved to Division I in 2004 and the annual series went on hiatus, the tradition faded away.
The rivalry returned in 2012.
The Jug didn’t.
And somewhere along the way, a nearly century-old piece of South Dakota football history apparently became a classified document.
The Last Known Sighting
We have witnesses.
We have video evidence.
We have a photograph.
In 2001, former SDSU defensive back Hank McCall recalled that Jackrabbit players went to Vermillion to retrieve the Jug after winning the rivalry game.
It remained in Brookings through the final years of the Division II series.
Then, on November 16, 2016, John Stiegelmeier appeared on Jackrabbit Journal with the actual trophy.
There it was.
On a table.
In broad daylight.
Stig talked about its history and bringing the tradition back.
He even said the schools should start exchanging it again.
And that photograph?
It’s apparently the last publicly documented sighting of the Jug we’ve been able to identify.
Since then, USD has beaten SDSU three times.
The Coyotes have received exactly zero Jugs.
Not even a miniature replica.
Nothing.
Now, after years of unanswered questions, we finally have a development.
Operation Brown Jug: The Cover-Up
On Monday, John Gaskins asked SDSU head coach Dan Jackson about the trophy.
Gaskins even suggested it might be in Stiegelmeier’s basement.
Jackson laughed.
Then he delivered perhaps the most suspicious sentence in the history of South Dakota athletics.
“I was told to stop looking, cause I wouldn’t find it.”
I’m sorry.
WHAT?
The head football coach was told to stop looking for his own school’s rivalry trophy?
By whom?
The university president?
The Board of Regents?
A mysterious individual in a black SUV with government plates?
Jackson went further, saying he believes university leadership knows where the Jug is, or who has it, and that bringing it back would require action from someone higher up.
He also recalled seeing the Jug when he previously worked at SDSU and said it would be engraved each year.
Which means this wasn’t some artifact that disappeared during the Great Depression.
People were still handling this thing within the last decade.
And now the head coach has apparently been instructed to abandon the investigation.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve stumbled into Watergate with better agriculture programs.
Forget the Kennedy files.
Forget Area 51.
RELEASE THE JUG FILES.
The Prime Suspects
Inside the Pack has launched an independent investigation, operating entirely outside university oversight and with absolutely no qualifications.
Here are our leading theories.
1. John Stiegelmeier’s Basement Beer Fridge
Suspect No. 1. The investigation begins here.
Let’s review the evidence.
Stig had the Jug in 2016.
Stig knows the history.
Stig has advocated bringing it back.
And, as anyone familiar with Stig knows, the man appreciates a cold beer.
Now, I’m not saying the Jug has spent the last decade serving as a decorative centerpiece in Stig’s basement bar.
I’m just saying there’s a reasonable possibility the trophy is sitting between a beer refrigerator and a signed photo of Adam Vinatieri.
Perhaps Stig has been using it to hold juice.
Perhaps every Saturday he pours himself a cold one, looks at the inscription, and whispers:
“Try and get it.”
We have no evidence of any of this.
Which, according to our understanding of conspiracy investigations, makes it even more suspicious.
2. A Classified Vault Beneath SDSU’s Administration Building
Jackson said this goes above his pay grade.
Above the head football coach?
That’s serious.
Our sources—which consist entirely of our imagination—indicate the existence of a secret underground facility beneath campus.
Access requires three university administrators, two security clearances, and the original recipe for SDSU’s Cookies ‘n Cream ice cream.
Inside are the university’s most closely guarded secrets.
The 1927 Little Brown Jug.
The location of every missing Hobo Day float.
And a classified memorandum titled:
OPERATION BROWNOUT: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES RETURN TO VERMILLION.
All documents have been heavily redacted, but Operation Brownout sounds like something Stig would cook up.
3. The Agricultural Heritage Museum
This is actually a legitimate lead.
A fan has claimed the trophy was once displayed at SDSU’s Agricultural Heritage Museum.
Which raises another question.
Did SDSU really take one of college football’s oldest rivalry trophies and put it in a museum with antique tractors?
Somewhere between a butter churn and a 1937 combine sits a piece of South Dakota football history.
The museum staff has been instructed to refer to it only as “the agricultural vessel.”
4. Inside the Dakota Marker
The Dakota Marker gets television appearances, national attention, elaborate trophy presentations and players celebrating with it.
The Little Brown Jug gets the witness protection program.
Perhaps the Marker has a false bottom.
Perhaps the Jug has been hidden inside it for years, like the world’s saddest Russian nesting doll.
Every time SDSU beats NDSU, the Marker gets lifted into the air.
And somewhere deep inside, the Little Brown Jug whispers:
“What about me?”
5. Stig’s Basement. Again.
We keep circling back to this.
The last known photographic evidence?
Stig.
The guy who said they should bring it back?
Stig.
The guy whose basement Gaskins specifically mentioned to the current head coach?
Also Stig.
I don’t know what more you want from us.
Someone check the fridge.
The People Demand Answers
Here’s the thing.
Behind all the jokes, this is actually a pretty incredible piece of South Dakota football history.
The Little Brown Jug dates back to 1927.
It survived generations of players, coaches, conference changes and nearly a century of football.
Both programs have expressed interest in bringing it back.
Jackson wants it.
USD coaches have expressed support for a traveling trophy.
The fans want it.
And yet, somehow, the trophy remains missing from the rivalry.
Not because nobody remembers it. However, maybe that’s what will make it so glorious when it is found again.
But apparently because the people who might know where it is haven’t brought it forward.
So we’re making a simple request.
SDSU, SHOW US THE JUG.
Declassify the documents.
Release the security footage.
Release the Little Brown Jug Files.
And let the winner of Saturday’s game take home a trophy that’s been part of this rivalry for nearly 100 years.
Because if South Dakota finally ends its 26-year losing streak in Brookings, there’s something beautiful about the thought of the Coyotes leaving town with a piece of history that apparently required a university-level conspiracy to keep hidden.
The inscription says “TRY AND GET IT.”
Well, we’re trying.
And Stig, if you’re reading this, the beer’s on us.
Just bring the Jug.
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