When opposing coaches Joe Davis of Western Illinois (left) and Chris Wilkerson of Eastern Illinois shake hands Saturday, it will be part of a football series that dates back to 1930. (Photo by Barry Bottino, PrairieStatePigskin.com)
By Barry Bottino
A unique, yet mysterious, piece of football history sits in Groninger Arena these days in Charleston. That’s the building where Eastern Illinois plays basketball.
A porcelain trophy, which is painted gold, resides in the first-floor office of Rich Moser, EIU’s associate athletic director of media and public relations.
The trophy, known as the Mayors Cup, had its roots with the football teams at EIU and Western Illinois, which will play for the 70th time at 2 p.m. Saturday in Charleston.
“It actually exists,” Moser said. “I’m assuming most people don’t know it exists. It’s a porcelain pot. God forbid if somebody ever dropped it.”
The Cup is emblazoned on one side with “Mayors Cup” and “EIU-WIU” on the other side. There’s no mention of any sport, year or game scores anywhere on the trophy, Moser said.
The Cup also detoured to tennis courts at Eastern and Western but mostly remains a mystery that few people at either school fully understand.
History lesson
Moser said he believes the trophy was contested in football in the 1960s and 1970s.
“I know they used to play for it. For how long, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t have any pictures of it ever being exchanged or a team holding it up that I can see in our archives.”
Was it a friendly rivalry between mayors of the two cities? Did the trophy pass between elected officials rather than football teams? Nobody that Prairie State Pigskin spoke with is certain.
In a review of nearly 30 Eastern Illinois and Western Illinois yearbooks from the 1960s through the 1980s, Prairie State Pigskin did not find any mentions of the Cup.
Researchers at EIU’s Booth Library and WIU’s Malpass Library examined archival information but also found nothing.
Messages sent to the Coles County Historical Society in Mattoon and the McDonough County Historical Society in Macomb were not returned.
From football to tennis
So how did the trophy end up being awarded in tennis?
That dates back to Eastern leaving for the Ohio Valley Conference in all sports in 1996, when legendary football coach Bob Spoo was leading the Panthers. EIU beat Western, 20-17, on Nov. 4, 1995, which was their final meeting as Gateway Football Conference rivals.
That league eventually became the Missouri Valley Football Conference and included WIU for four decades before the Leathernecks joined Eastern in the Ohio Valley Conference in 2024.
“We won the last conference meeting when we were in the Gateway (in 1995),” Moser said. “Coach Spoo had it in his office. It sat in coach’s office maybe 10 years, at least.”
The late Spoo ended his 25-year run at Eastern when he retired after the 2011 season.
In 1999, according to an article on EIU’s athletic website, then-men’s tennis coach Michael Hunt got permission from Spoo to use the Cup as a traveling trophy when EIU and WIU played each other in both men’s and women’s tennis.
The trophy was first awarded in tennis in 2000 and continued through at least 2007, according to the article.
“It’s a very unique event because very few college tennis programs play for a cup/trophy/award against a traditional rival like our two programs do,” former EIU men’s tennis coach John Blackburn said in 2007. “It’s also special because the men’s and the women’s teams are competing collectively, which almost never happens in college tennis.”
Blackburn coached at Eastern from 2005 to 2015.
“When John left, it ended up in my office,” Moser said.
EIU discontinued both the men’s and women’s tennis programs in 2025.
Trophy time
The EIU and WIU men’s basketball teams play for the Old Railsplitter Ax, which also dates back more than 50 years. The tradition faded and the trophy was discovered — according to an article on the Ohio Valley Conference website — in a storage closet in 2015 and given to former Eastern head coach Jay Spoonhour, who helped revive the rivalry award.
New Eastern athletic director Mark Wilson, who was hired over the summer, told Prairie State Pigskin that he would like to have the two schools to play for an all-sports trophy.
Western Illinois head football coach Joe Davis had mixed feelings when asked this week about a trophy game before the two schools.
“I don’t know if that’s something we want to create at this point,” he said. “If there was one, cool. If there’s not, there hasn’t been one. To me, it’s a great in-state rivalry with two tradition-rich programs.”
EIU head football coach Chris Wilkerson, a former Panthers defensive lineman, said the game may have lost its trophy but hasn’t lost any luster, especially for older Eastern alums.
“They would say this may be our most heated rival,” he said. “East-West. It’s a very important game.”
Barry Bottino is a co-founder of Prairie State Pigskin and a 19-year veteran of three Illinois newspapers. He has covered college athletics since 1995.
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