“It’s not the prettiest trophy I would say,” O’Connor said, chuckling. “But nonetheless, I guess it’s a symbol of it (the rivalry game) but it’s definitely not the prettiest or the most glamorous trophy.”

Of all the lesser known trophies in the college football world, MSU plays for perhaps one of the more unsightly ones. The Land Grant Trophy, conjured up in the collective minds of MSU and Penn State University’s athletic departments, is a hodgepodge of bookstore collectibles and pictures all placed onto a wooden block.

The visually unappealing, heavy object is almost a metaphor for the Big Ten’s two leftover teams during college football’s herald Rivalry Week.

When Penn State began playing in the Big Ten in 1993 it drew MSU the last week of the season, and this continued until 2011. Faced with a new reality, both schools decided in a good faith measure to add a little something to the game.

“I think it's become a rivalry that was started by Coach (George) Perles and Coach (Joe) Paterno, at that point in time,” head coach Mark Dantonio said. “To me, it's always been a year-end game for us.”

That good faith measure, however, has turned this perennial last game into a faint rivalry and spawned a plethora of jokes. It also elicits responses like this.

“We talk about this all the time,” junior linebacker Chris Frey said, laughing. “We always make fun of it because it looks like Mr. Nick, our equipment manager, we always say it looks like Mr. Nick made it when he was 10 years old.”

The trophy resembles a block of wood adorned with shelves with replicas of the Sparty Statue and Penn State’s Nittany Lion Shrine and pictures of Beaumont Tower and Penn State’s Old Main. It's crowned with a gold football player found on youth football trophies.

“It’s just so many different pieces put into one trophy,” Frey said. “It’s weird, it just sticks out. ... It looks like somebody broke the top of a trophy off and put it on the top of the other trophy.”

Many pictures of the trophy include multiple players trying to hoist the trophy. Few show any players capable of lifting it over their heads.

“It’s extremely heavy,” O’Connor said. “I saw Riley (Bullough) caring it today and he was struggling. I thought I wouldn’t give it a chance.”

It more than likely ranks as the lesser known of MSU’s rivalry trophy games as the Spartans duke it out for the Paul Bunyan Trophy, Old Brass Spittoon and the Megaphone Trophy. It’s become a strange anecdote, almost like the weird cousin at a family reunion — it just kind of exists there.

But even for its less than stellar appeal, it still seems to matter to at least one Spartan.

“Every Big Ten game is important, but when you have a trophy game it’s that much more important because you want that in our building for the offseason for the year,” fifth-year senior linebacker Riley Bullough said.

For as unsightly as it may be, they’ll be glad to have it in a season like this as a win over Penn State sends MSU into the offseason with something positive to build on.

They’ll just have to drag it along with them.