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CoSIDA.com/CoSIDA360 Magazine Archive
Note: This story appeared in the Spring 2021 May edition of CoSIDA 360 Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.
Pieces of History – Finding John Tucker's Playbook, Center Court and a Slab of Bacon
SIDs help bring long-lost school memorabilia back into the light.
by Will Roleson – CoSIDA Associate Executive Director @wroleson
The 1993-94 academic year was a memorable one for the University of Wisconsin athletics program.
The football team won the Big Ten Conference title and played in the Rose Bowl for the first time in 31 years. And, the men’s basketball squad qualified for the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 47 years.
I was fortunate to be a post-graduate intern in the men’s sports information office at Wisconsin that year, and I got the chance to travel with the basketball team to Los Angeles for a game at Loyola Marymount while the full-time SIDs were with football for a game against Michigan State in Tokyo, Japan.
But it’s another moment that year that was the most memorable for me.
That spring I was assigned the task of cleaning out a dusty attic storage area at legendary Camp Randall Stadium. Amid the old media guides and press releases, I stumbled upon a leather-bound case that resembled a suitcase from the early 20th century. Intrigued, I opened it to find a rectangular piece of painted wood that included a three-dimensional football in the middle emblazoned with the letter “W” or “M” depending on how it’s displayed and the word ‘Bacon’ on each end.
I took it to my boss, sports information director Steve Malchow and, after some research, we discovered it was the long-lost Slab of Bacon trophy that had been awarded to the victor of the Wisconsin-Minnesota football rivalry until the 1940s. It was supposed to have been exchanged following a game that decade but mysteriously disappeared. In its place, the Paul Bunyan Axe trophy was created and has been awarded since 1948.
The Slab of Bacon has since been on display in the Wisconsin football offices in the stadium. As former Badger coach and current athletic director Barry Alvarez said shortly after it was re-discovered,”We took home the bacon, and kept it.”
The story of finding the Slab of Bacon is featured in the 2005 book
Tales from the Wisconsin Badgers by current UW Senior Associate AD for External Communications Justin Doherty, who served as CoSIDA president in 2009-10 and was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame in 2013.
My story got me thinking about SIDs who may have similar ones. The following have been shared with me.
Playbook of a Legend
In the spring of 2015, former Arkansas Tech University SID Paul Smith was re-organizing an athletics trophy case inside Tucker Coliseum when he stumbled upon a mailing tube hidden behind a portrait of legendary Tech coach John Tucker, the arena’s namesake.
Inside the tube was an academic calendar from the 1937-38 school year. And, on its reverse was a playbook in Tucker’s own handwriting.
The artifact was a unique glimpse into the mind of Tucker, who was also an outstanding football player at Tech from 1919-24. He coached the Wonder Boys from 1933-41 and 1945-57 and later served as a teacher, athletic director and director of student affairs until 1972. In addition to the coliseum, Tucker Hall on the ATU campus is also named in his honor.
“Finding John Tucker’s playbook was a complete surprise,” said Smith, who now serves as assistant director of athletics for communications at Texas Woman’s University. “The day I opened it I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had to call one of our history professors on campus to confirm that I had what I thought I had.”
After some restoration, the playbook is now proudly displayed in the Arkansas Tech Museum.
“This playbook was a connection to the most revered figure in the history of the program,” said Smith. “John Tucker was the original ‘Wonder Boy’ at Arkansas Tech. To find an original artifact of coach Tucker’s was incredible because it allowed us to connect the current program with its history.”
John Tucker's Playbook, discovered by Paul Smith, has been restored and is displayed proudly in the Arkansas Tech Museum.
Center Court Finds New Home
In 1965, Jankling Gym at the University of Missouri at Rolla (now Missouri University of Science of Technology) was razed to make room for a new library on campus. In the process, the center circle from the wooden basketball floor was cut out and, at some point, was brought to the new facility when it opened a few years later.
A few years ago, Mark Mullins, the school’s athletic director was talking to one of the custodians in a mechanical room in the facility and noticed the center court cut-out with an old-time Miner logo leaning against a wall. He verified with the basketball coach from the 1960s that it was, in fact, the center court from the old gymnasium.
“Obviously, we wanted to make sure that piece of history could be preserved in some form, but as you could imagine, the item was rather large,” said long-time Missouri S&T sports information director John Kean. “Mark got in touch with a person in town who worked on woodworking projects and it was decided that it would be turned into a coffee table.”
The woodworker fashioned some custom legs, preserved the painted logo and added a piece of glass on top to further protect the piece.
The table now sits as a centerpiece in S&T’s Hall of Fame Room in the Gale Bullman Multi-Purpose Building.
“It has turned out to be an awesome piece in the Hall of Fame Room, a centerpiece for the room,” said Mullins, who retired earlier this year after 28 years as athletic director. “It’s important in preserving the history of the program. Making a table out of it allowed us to make this something that will last for years.”
The former center court at Missouri S&T's Jankling Gym was discovered in a mechanical room. It was turned into a coffee table in S&T's Hall of Fame Room.
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