ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Jon Falk is the primary protector of the Little Brown Jug and the rivalry it represents.

Falk was Michigan’s equipment manager for 40 years before retiring in 2013. When Bo Schembechler hired him in 1974, he put Falk in charge of three sacred artifacts: the Paul Bunyan Trophy for the Michigan State rivalry, the Big Ten championship trophy and the Little Brown Jug.

Falk took this duty seriously. The pitcher has been associated with the Michigan-Minnesota rivalry since 1903, when he first appeared on the Michigan sidelines. It has survived world wars, pandemics, the Great Depression, a mysterious disappearance in the 1930s, and many rounds of conference realignment. It even survived a disaster in the late 1980s when Falk’s daughter was playing in the equipment room and almost knocked it over.

“It’s a valuable piece of ceramics,” Falk said.

Falk is an unabashed advocate of the Michigan-Minnesota rivalry, a series that was highlighted as one of the greatest rivalries in college football as recently as the late 1960s by the likes of Sports Illustrated’s Dan Jenkins. In the decades since, Michigan-Minnesota has become more of a niche rivalry than a national event, highlighted by the Michigan-Ohio State game, the Iron Bowl between Auburn and Alabama, the Red River rivalry between Texas and Oklahoma, and other highlights games with stakes.

That’s partly because Michigan rarely loses possession of the pitcher, who has been in Ann Arbor for all but four years since 1967. It is also a result of scheduling changes that made Michigan-Minnesota an occasional rivalry instead of an annual rivalry. Saturday’s meeting is just the fifth game in the series in the last ten seasons.

The Gophers and Wolverines played every year from 1929 to 1998 before two two-year breaks in 1999 and 2000 and 2009 and 2010. With the switch to the East-West divisional alignment in 2014, the encounters became even rarer. When the Big Ten added four teams from the Pac-12 and eliminated their divisions, the league announced 12 protected rivalries that would be played each year. Michigan-Minnesota did not make the list.

The rapid pace of change in college football has raised fears that some of the sport’s quirks and historical oddities may be losing their relevance. The 75-year-old Falk is part of a generation of oral historians who want to ensure that relics like the Brown Jug are not forgotten.

“The little brown mug has always been valued here,” Falk said. “There are years when we don’t play against them. Of course, we play Ohio State and Michigan State every year. (These games) are no more important than the Little Brown Jug.”

Michigan leads the series 77-25-3. (Danny Moloshok/Getty Images)

Falk knows the history of the pot by heart. Before a game at Minnesota in 1903, Michigan coach Fielding Yost sent a student manager named Tommy Roberts to purchase a 30-cent jar from Red Wing Pottery to store water for the team. The reasons are not entirely clear, but it has been suggested that Yost feared someone might be tampering with Michigan’s water supply.

Minnesota dueled Michigan to a 6-6 tie, the first time in 30 games under Yost that Michigan didn’t win. Minnesota fans stormed the field with two minutes left, forcing the officials to end the game early. In the chaos, Michigan left its water jug ​​behind. An administrator named Oscar Munson found the pitcher and brought him to Minnesota’s athletic director. After tempers cooled and the series resumed in 1909, the teams agreed that the winner would get to keep the pitcher.

In 1931, rumors began circulating that the pitcher had disappeared from its place in the Michigan Administration Building. The Associated Press reported the pitcher was discovered in a “rarely visited storage room” inside the Michigan Union and suspected that an unwitting person had removed it because they felt the humble piece of pottery looked out of place among Michigan’s other trophies be.

That wasn’t the end of the story. The following day, the AP issued an updated bulletin saying the pitcher was still missing. After learning of the pitcher’s disappearance, pranksters had begun placing imitations around Ann Arbor, much to the chagrin of Phil Pack, Michigan’s publicity director and keeper of the pitcher.

“Pack was roaming around a cider mill today looking for clues,” the AP reported. “He found a lot of jars – but not the little brown one.”

In November 1931, the Michigan Daily reported that four men drove to a gas station in Ann Arbor in a “big Cadillac touring car” and rolled the “old brown water jug” onto the ground. The men had hats pulled over their eyes and the car’s license plate was smeared with mud. The gas station attendant believed the license plate resembled one from Minnesota, and an official narrative arose: Minnesota fans had stolen the mug from the Michigan administration building and then dumped it at the gas station as news of the theft began to spread.

Despite the skepticism from Minnesota, Yost insisted that the jug found at the gas station was real. Two years later, another jar appeared in a bush near the University of Michigan Hospital. Yost recognized this jug as the real one and admitted that the jug found at the gas station two years earlier was a fake. According to the official story, the mug that will be presented to the winner of Saturday’s game is the authentic mug that Tommy Roberts purchased 121 years ago.

“As far as we know, it’s the same pitcher,” Falk said.

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For Falk, it’s a reason to be proud that Michigan has lost the pitcher just three times in his 40 years as an equipment manager. The first time was in 1977, when unranked Minnesota defeated No. 1 Michigan 16-0 – in part, Falk said, because Minnesota groundskeepers left the sprinklers on all night and turned the field into a leaving a sodden mess behind.

In 1986, Schembechler entered the Minnesota game on the verge of breaking Yost’s school record for coaching wins. Michigan’s players raised $500 to purchase a plaque that Falk planned to present to Schembechler after the game. Minnesota upset Michigan that day and the players spent another $200 to change the engraving. Falk presented the plaque to Schembechler the following week after Michigan beat Ohio State in Columbus, fulfilling quarterback Jim Harbaugh’s guarantee.

Michigan won the next 16 games against Minnesota, which hired Glen Mason as coach in 1997. Mason, a former assistant coach at Ohio State, once reprimanded Falk for being a poor host and not even bringing him a cup of coffee when the Buckeyes played in Ann Arbor. From then on, Falk always appeared with a cup of coffee in his hand.

Minnesota nearly beat Michigan in 2003 and 2004, losing each game by a field goal. Before the 2005 game at Michigan Stadium, Falk made his usual trip to the visiting locker room to greet Mason.

“I have the cup of coffee,” Mason told him. “Now I want to get the jug.”

Minnesota beat Michigan 23-20 that day with a last-second field goal. The Gophers boarded their charter flight, pitcher in hand, and were greeted by a throng of fans at the airport. Mason called his wife and told her to meet him for a celebratory dinner at Murray’s, a well-known steakhouse in Minneapolis. When he arrived at the restaurant, the mug was in the car next to him.

Mason planned to leave the mug outside, but the waiter at the restaurant was worried it would be stolen. So Mason carried the mug inside and placed it on the table next to him at dinner as fans lined up to take photos with the famous trophy.

“I turned around and saw a man standing there with the pot in one hand and his martini glass in the other,” Mason said. “He’d had a few of them and I thought, ‘He’s going to break this sucker.’ The picture still hangs with Murray.

When Harbaugh was hired as Michigan’s coach in 2015, he invited Falk back as a special adviser. Michigan lost the pitcher in 2014, Brady Hoke’s final season, and one of Falk’s proudest moments was asking Harbaugh to bring the pitcher back from the Minnesota sideline after Michigan got him back in 2015.

“I tell you, I cried and ran onto the field for the first time in my life,” Falk said. “I grabbed that pitcher and we all went into the Michigan locker room.”

Falk is now fully retired and has turned over all Krug-related duties to Gary Hazelitt, Michigan’s equipment director. Falk has no official role in the program, but said coach Sherrone Moore welcomed him with open arms. He has a seat in the press box at Michigan Stadium and greets players in the locker room after games, just as he did for 40 years as equipment manager.

“When you’re 75 years old, you do your best,” Falk said. “To be honest, it’s being around the kids and being in the locker room that keeps you young.”

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For many years, Falk kept the jar locked in the equipment room for fear that something would happen to it. Eventually he concluded that it was “not fair to the pitcher” to have him hidden in storage all year. Michigan began displaying it in Schembechler Hall, and now it sits in a trophy display added as part of Michigan’s recent locker room renovation.

Michigan-Minnesota doesn’t generate the same buzz as the Michigan State or Ohio State game, but players still consider this a rivalry. Wide receiver Fredrick Moore said Michigan has been talking about the pitcher “since the summer” and keeping him in Ann Arbor has been a focus this week.

As long as Falk is there, nothing will change.

“When you see the faces of those kids on Saturday,” Falk said, “whoever wins, when they rush in and grab that little brown mug, it’s the proudest day of their lives.”

(Top photo: Bailey Hillesheim / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)