P.T. Barnum has been quoted as saying “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” but those in the agriculture industry might disagree with that at times.
The vicious backlash over the Iowa Cy-Hawk series football trophy, sponsored by Iowa’s corn growers, might be one of those times – or it might not. The trophy shows an Iowa family together after a day on the farm, the farmer husband kneeling before his wife and children with a bushel of corn between them. It was designed by the Iowa Corn Growers to represent “the people and characteristics that are uniquely Iowan.”
It was immediately and almost universally condemned as the “worst trophy in sports.” Trophy chatter Twitter and Facebook just intensified over the weekend and once Governor Branstad commented Monday that he thought they “could do better” it was obvious that something had to be done. Iowa Corn representatives along with University of Iowa and Iowa State University officials will be holding a press conference Tuesday at 2 pm central in Johnston to talk about the situation and it is likely that some kind of modifications to the trophy, if not a complete redesign, will be announced.
Most of the criticism is based on the fact that the trophy has no football on it. Some of the comments have been humorous and some have been mean, but many of the sports writers seemed to be careful to point out they were not anti-farmer, like The Gazette in Cedar Rapids – “Yes, we are corn. Yes, we are farmers. And thank the heavens we are. Many of our families have lived it and we continue to live it every day in our state. We celebrate that every day. The Cy-Hawk Trophy should be about football, the game and the players.”
The question is whether this publicity will ultimately be positive or negative, because the whole purpose of the corn growers sponsorship of this high profile state rivalry is to remind Iowans about the importance of farming and corn. Had this been your basic sports trophy with maybe a football on top of a bushel of corn, the story would have gotten some state coverage and mentions in the college sports media. Instead, it literally went viral. I’m sure someone can calculate the number of mentions of this trophy in traditional and social media and it has to already be huge, and it will continue to have legs for some time as the college football season gets underway.
There have been positive comments about the trophy, like this one on the Iowa Corn Facebook page – “This will turn out to be a HUGE WIN for Iowa Corn and the CyHawk series.” It could very well happen.