Notre Dame Football Rivalry Trophies: The Shillelagh and Purdue
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There are few things in the college football world that give me as much joy as the entire collection of rivalry trophies. College football is supposed to be weird, stupid, and full of things that don’t make sense — but yet full of emotion and nostalgia. Nothing makes that more clear than the rivalry trophies that exist in the sport.
Notre Dame is one of those schools that has a rivalry trophy game — hell, they have five of them. Some fans may not know much about them as the Irish used to try and keep them shrouded in mystery like some type of relic from the holy land hidden away in a chapel deep in the woods of medieval France.
So as the year goes on and Notre Dame plays for all of these trophies (except for one in particular), we’re going to talk about them. This week it’s The Shillelagh and the Purdue Boilermakers.
Shillelagh Trophy
The Shillelagh Trophy is the prize that goes to the winner of the Notre Dame-Purdue game, because apparently two schools playing football against each other for more than a century wasn’t enough — we needed a giant Irish walking stick involved, too.
Notre Dame and Purdue first met way back in 1896, making this one of the older rivalries on either team’s schedule. The game became an annual tradition from 1946 through 2014, giving us nearly seven decades of regular meetings between these two in-state neighbors.
As for the trophy itself, the Shillelagh Trophy made its debut in 1957. It is an actual shillelagh, donated by Joe McLaughlin, a merchant seaman and Notre Dame supporter who brought the club back from Ireland.
Shillelagh’s must have been all the rage back then. There was an older Shillelagh Trophy that Notre Dame and Northwestern played for that was lost at one point in time, and then recently found.
So yes, the winner gets to take home a piece of Ireland, a piece of rivalry history, and one extremely sturdy reminder of who won the football game. Even though I personally prefer the Jeweled Shillelagh with USC, I do appreciate the fact that in 2024 Notre Dame players brought the trophy out onto the field after their victory over Purdue and celebrated with it properly… and then it was never seen near grass again.
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