© 2024 WVIK
Listen at 90.3 FM and 98.3 FM in the Quad Cities, 95.9 FM in Dubuque, or on the WVIK app!
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

COVID Sidelines Bronze Turkey

Knox College
from the Knox College website

For the first time in more than 70 years, one of the oldest football rivalries in college sports will not be renewed. The annual football game between two small colleges in western Illinois, Knox and Monmouth, has been called off. 

And the reason of course is the pandemic. In fact, this will be only the second time the Knox - Monmouth football game has been missed since 1888 - previously only World War 2 could get in the way of the annual game, in 1943 through 1945.

Because the game is played each year near Thanksgiving, the winner takes home the Bronze Turkey trophy, once named by ESPN to its list of "strangest rivalry trophies."Monmouth currently leads in the series with 70 wins, including its current 21 game winning streak. Knox has won 50, and they’ve tied 10 times.

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois.