.vresize.36.36.medium.0.png){kind=small}
.vresize.36.36.medium.0.png){kind=small}
The corn-themed trophy for the annual Iowa vs. Iowa State football game is history.
That doesn't mean fans won't see and hear a lot more about farming and agriculture in the Hawkeye State this season: Both schools have reached agreements with the Iowa Corn Growers Association and the Iowa Farm Bureau for various sponsorships and advertising.
The corn growers association will run ads during all 12 radio broadcasts of Iowa games this fall, sponsor Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz's weekly television show, advertise in game-day programs and get similar publicity through Iowa State.
The farm bureau has signed a five-year agreement with Iowa to promote farmers everywhere from the Internet to inside Kinnick Stadium, and will be selling Iowa-grown food products at Iowa State games this fall.
The farm bureau is hoping the partnerships raise public awareness about where food comes from and who farmers are at a time when only 2 percent of Iowans actually farm and the world faces a growing demand for food, spokeswoman Laurie Johns said. The corn growers group uses its ads to tout the food and energy products its 6,000 members create.
''Both organizations are great partners of ours,'' said Chuck Schroeder, general manager of Hawkeye Sports Properties, the university's sports marketing arm. ''We're one of the leading agriculture states in the United States. It's a huge part of our economy, a huge part of the world's economy. When you look at our partnerships with seed companies to the Iowa Farm Bureau, they look at the Iowa Hawkeyes as a way to reach the state of Iowa. We have a terrific brand, a terrific fan base.''
The corn growers group, however, was on the wrong end of a public relations nightmare this week over the Cy-Hawk Trophy.
While the organization has long sponsored both Hawkeyes and Cyclones athletics, it is getting additional advertising after becoming the title sponsor of the Cy-Hawk series between Iowa and Iowa State earlier this year. The deal also gave its representatives ''a seat at the table'' in helping design a new trophy to replace one that had gone back and forth between Ames and Iowa City for decades, Schroeder said.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the trophy unveiled at the Iowa State Fair last week depicted a farm family gathered around a bushel of corn. Not a football in sight.
Fans lit up Twitter and Facebook, blasting the trophy as perpetuating a stereotype that all Iowans are farmers. They aimed most of their ire at the Iowa Corn Growers but representatives of Iowa and Iowa State said they approved the design and deserved to share the blame. Citing the overwhelmingly negative reaction, the organizers ditched the trophy Tuesday and announced plans to award an interim award at the Sept. 10 game in Ames while fans help decide what the new one should look like for next year.
''The goal of the partnership is to align the brands - in this case a great organization in Iowa Corn and the Hawkeyes and the Cyclones,'' Schroeder said. ''Were they dictating what the trophy was going to look like? No, they were not. It was a collaborative effort.''
Nonetheless, many fans questioned whether the corn growers were given too much clout over one of the biggest annual events in Iowa. ''It was a marketing ploy for one of their sponsors,'' Iowa sophomore Brian McGill said of the trophy.
University officials have refused to say how much the financial arrangements are worth because they are technically between the groups and Hawkeye Sports Properties, a subsidiary of Learfield Sports, which has a university contract to market multimedia rights for athletics.
The farm bureau's agreement with Iowa will promote the ''America Needs Farmers'' brand. The university will rename a walkway inside Kinnick Stadium ''American Needs Farmers'' plaza and erect an ''America Needs Farmers'' wall of fame honoring players. Fans will be able to buy ANF-themed apparel and celebrate ''America Needs Farmers Day,'' which is expected to become an annual tradition, on Oct. 15.
The initiative's roots date back to Iowa coach Hayden Fry putting ''ANF'' stickers on players' helmets in 1985 in the midst of the farm crisis but the partnership marks the first of its kind between the Iowa Farm Bureau and Iowa, said its president, Craig Lang.
''We saw it as a huge opportunity'' to improve the public's attitude toward farmers, he said.
The ANF agreement has seeped deeply into Iowa athletics. Anyone who tuned into Iowa's media day Aug. 5 to see Ferentz speak about this year's team first heard him boast about how the state leads the nation in agricultural production. The department's website features an entire section dedicated to farming public relations.
Under ''tailgate trivia,'' fans can learn that ''corn is a team player'' because it helps make more than 2,500 items at the grocery store and that a ''first-round draft pick hog'' is ready for market when he weighs 240 pounds. Lang, also president of the Iowa Board of Regents, which governs Iowa's public universities, dismissed concerns that agricultural interests had too much influence. (Because of his dual roles, he said he recused himself from negotiations over the partnership.)
''The information is fair and honest,'' he said. ''It wouldn't be any different than going to the Iowa Department of Agriculture website.''
Despite the trophy flap, the schools' partnership with the corn growers is intact.
Associate Iowa athletics director Rick Klatt called it a ''tremendous organization'' whose sponsorship of the Cy-Hawk series would help raise the profile of lesser-known sports like women's volleyball.
''To have a partner like Iowa Corn get behind those efforts,'' he said, ''is really extraordinary.''
