Wisconsin shattered the Duke’s Mayo Bowl crystal trophy. A replacement is on the way.
A celebration ended in shattered crystal for the University of Wisconsin football team Wednesday evening.
The Badgers soundly defeated Wake Forest, 42-28, at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte to claim the Duke’s Mayo Bowl title, then the team not-so-smoothly dropped the trophy during a locker room dance party.
Quarterback Graham Mertz made the fumble. Videos of the accident went viral.
“We just wanted everybody to have a piece of that trophy,” Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst joked during his post-game press conference.
The Charlotte Sports Foundation, a non-profit organizer of major sporting events in Charlotte, supplied the trophy made of Waterford crystal. The foundation said that it will be replaced.
“It’s not a 10-dollar trophy, obviously,” a representative from the Charlotte Sports Foundation told The Observer, adding that the incident seemed like an appropriate end to 2020.
The representative did not speculate as to the hardware’s exact cost, but another Waterford trophy that belonged to the University of Alabama football program — and was accidentally shattered in 2012 — was valued at $30,000, according to ESPN. That trophy was also replaced.
“A quick reminder that we have the best trophy in football,” a tweet from the Duke’s Mayo Bowl Twitter account read, along with the image of the in-tact, custom-made crystal football.
Another image also circulated after the accident: A container of Duke’s Mayonnaise taped atop the trophy base as a replacement for the valuable crystal. The Charlotte Sports Foundation and Homefield Apparel are selling limited edition t-shirts for $28 with a design of the makeshift mayonnaise container trophy.
The proceeds go to Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina in Charlotte. T-shirts sold after Duke’s Mayo was announced as the title sponsor in the summer raised $7,005 over a three-week period to generate 49,000 pounds of food for the Charlotte community.
This story was originally published December 31, 2020 at 1:03 PM.
