Portnoy and Big Cat hunt for UConn-UMass Southwick Jug
TLDR: Dave Portnoy and Big Cat want the Southwick Jug found before Barstool brings its college football show to UConn vs. UMass, 2 years after UConn won the trophy 47-42 and never got it on the field.
With Barstool headed to East Hartford next week, the boss went looking for the one prop the game is supposed to have.
Where is this Jug? We need the jug
It's a fair question, and the history explains why nobody has a clean answer. UMass's NIL collective, the Midnight Ride, built the Southwick Jug for the 2024 game. It's named after the Southwick Jog, the little notch where the Massachusetts-Connecticut border dips south, and it's an antique bean crock for Massachusetts with Charter Oak wood for Connecticut. It's beautiful New England nonsense, and exactly the kind of trophy a rivalry like this should have.
Then the game happened. UConn beat UMass 47-42 in Amherst on November 30, 2024, and the Jug never came out. UMass said it got the trophy only days before kickoff and didn't have time to name it properly, find a sponsor or plan any marketing around it. Jim Mora said he asked for it after the game and was told point blank UMass wasn't giving it up. Later the collectives sorted it out, and UConn's NIL group reportedly got hold of the Jug and planned to give it to the team someday. Nobody seems to have seen it since.
Big Cat didn't need much convincing to join in.
Have to find the Jug.
There's a reason the Jug matters this week in particular. The 2025 game got canceled when UMass had to free up room for 8 conference games after joining the MAC full-time, so the trophy has sat through a whole year with no game to be played for. The rivalry comes back on October 23 at Rentschler Field, with a 7 p.m. kickoff on CBS Sports Network. This whole thing started when Portnoy tweeted on October 2 about bringing the Barstool College Football Show to UMass vs. UConn. Now the show goes live at 5:30 p.m. outside the stadium with Portnoy, Brandon Walker, Big Cat, Mike Katic and Kayce Smith.
Of course, Portnoy is already thinking past the trophy and on to the merch.
Im inquiring about filling a tshirt cannon with the logo
That's the right energy for a game that has never had much juice. Between the 2-year wait and the 47-42 shootout, plus a trophy that went missing from the moment it was made, there's finally a real story here. Now it needs a real ending, with somebody carrying the Jug out to midfield next Friday night and handing it to the winner on live TV. If it still hasn't turned up by kickoff, expect Barstool to make its absence the main storyline of the night.
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