In a show of confidence in college football’s longevity, an anonymous donor in 1959 funded an elaborate silver trophy on which room was left to etch the names of the next 100 national champions — a century’s worth of champions.
The trophy, a replica of a football stadium, took Tiffany & Co. eight months to make and cost $8,800, equivalent to an inflation-adjusted $71,000 today. It was donated to the National Football Foundation in tribute to General Douglas MacArthur and named the MacArthur Bowl. The first champion’s name was etched on it after the 1959 season: Syracuse University.
The name of each national champion since then has been dutifully added to the trophy, which now is on permanent display in the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta.
At noon Sunday, a ceremony will be held in the Hall of Fame to celebrate the addition of last season’s championship team, Ohio State, to the names etched on the original, well-maintained trophy. Ohio State coach Urban Meyer is scheduled to be on hand. The ceremony, to be emceed by ESPN’s Brad Nessler, will be open to the public, with general-admission Hall of Fame tickets required.
“It’s a great piece of history,” National Football Foundation president and CEO Steve Hatchell said of the 56-year-old trophy. “We want to keep this piece of history going.”
The foundation and Hall of Fame have photos of many championship-winning coaches posing with the trophy through the decades — Bear Bryant, Bob Devaney, Vince Dooley, Woody Hayes, John McKay, Ara Parseghian and Darrell Royal among them. And Urban Meyer, too, when he was at Florida.
The trophy itself merits a close look.
Consisting of about 400 ounces of silver, it was designed with input from MacArthur, who was an early leader of the National Football Foundation. A MacArthur quote is inscribed on it: “There is no substitute for victory.”
The trophy — 25 inches by 18 inches on its base and 10 inches tall — is a miniature, yet detailed, re-creation of a huge stadium. There are rows of seats carved in relief, tiny goal posts, etched yard lines. Most important, the entrance archways on the stadium exterior provide space to engrave the name of each year’s champion alongside its predecessors.
As college football has changed its method of determining national champions through the years, and as other trophies have come and gone, the method of determining which team’s name goes on the MacArthur Bowl has evolved.
In the polls era before 1998, the National Football Foundation’s awards committee voted on each year’s champion. Twice, the committee allowed two teams to share the honor. The committee made its choice before the bowls until the 1970s, when the decision was made to wait until after.
During the BCS era from 1998 through 2013, the MacArthur Bowl honor went automatically to the winner of the BCS championship game, with the presentation made at a news conference on the following day. With last season’s launch of the College Football Playoff, the MacArthur Bowl now adopts the winner of the playoff and holds off on a presentation until the winning coach can make it to Atlanta.
In the past, the trophy was shipped to the campuses of the championship teams for part of a year before being returned and readied for the next champion. The new plan is to keep it at the Hall of Fame year-round.
“We think it just adds to the lore of the Hall of Fame,” Hatchell said.
Adding each year’s national champion to the trophy can continue for another 44 seasons before all of the space on the replica stadium’s archways will be filled.
“Then we’ll have to do what athletic directors do and have a stadium expansion,” Hatchell said with a laugh.
