Awarded each year to the winner of the Indiana-Purdue football game, the Old Oaken Bucket has origins dating all the way back to 1925. That was the year that the Chicago-based alumni groups of both schools decided that their annual football rivalry need some kind of trophy.
The alumni groups charged two men—Russel Gray of Purdue and Clarence Jones of Indiana—to find a trophy appropriate to the Indiana showdown. Gray and Jones subsequently reported back that they believed “an old oaken bucket would be a most typical trophy” for Indiana, and suggested that the alumni groups go about finding one. Of course, they also suggested that the bucket be from Indiana.
Another Purdue-Indiana duo—Fritz Ernst and Whitley J. Huddle—were the men who ultimately found the bucket that became The Old Oaken Bucket, however. The most commonly accepted story is that Ernst and Huddle found the bucket a farmstead in Southern Indiana, and that beaten-up bucket had been used by a Confederate general during the Civil War. There is no way of confirming this, however, and some accounts suggest the Civil War angle isn’t exactly true. Others say the bucket was actually found in Illinois, not Indiana.
No matter, the bucket was adopted as the official trophy of the Purdue-Indiana series in 1925. That first game ended in a 0-0 tie. Because there was no winner, a chain link inscribed with both a “P” and an “I” was added, symbolic of the no-decision. Ever since, a “P” link has been added for each Purdue win, an “I” link for each Indiana win, and a “P/I” link for each tie.
As of the end of the 2007 season, Purdue held a 68-36-6 advantage.
