DES MOINES, Iowa — It was 1977 when Iowa and Iowa State faced each other for the first time in over 40 years.
In the year leading up to that, Bob Uetz thought there should be something to mark this special occasion.
"We were all excited. I was driving home one night with my wife and three kids. The oldest one was 10," Uetz said. "This was in the fall of '76, I was thinking about the game. The game's finally gonna be played, and we get to see Iowa and Iowa State. I said, 'There ought to be a trophy for this game.'"
So Uetz and his friends decided to do something about it.
They all chipped in their own money to create a traveling trophy for the game and named it the Cy-Hawk.
"Today, everybody throws this term Cy-Hawk out. Everyone knows what it means, but nobody knows where it came from. It was from Bob Updegraff, my buddy looking at that trophy design in a trophy shop that no longer exists down at 30th and Forest in Des Moines which said Cy-Hawk. That's where it came from."
They wanted to make the trophy part of the game's tradition.
So why not ask the most powerful person in the state at the time — Iowa Gov. Bob Ray.
"Bob and Bob, just these two guys going to the state house and going into the governor's office with this trophy that they made and saying 'We think you should give this away at the first renewal of the Iowa-Iowa State game', and the governor agreeing to it. I just think who has the guts to do that? And then who could pull that off?" said Ben Godar, director of 'Birth of the Cy-Hawk'.
Godar first learned of this story through Uetz as a student and went on to make a documentary about it.
"It grew so organically our of a group of fans, it really feels true to what I think a lot of us experience, that it is this thing that we, as fans, take ownership of," Godar said.
What was once just an idea among friends became a staple of the Cy-Hawk rivalry.
The original trophy was retired in 2010. The design has changed a few times since then, but what it represents has always remained the same.
"It just represents so much. It's a wonderful rivalry and it should continue for ever and ever," Uetz said.
The other co-creator of the trophy Bob Updegraff passed away in 2013. Uetz said he wishes Updegraff could see how much bigger the rivalry has become in the past 10 years.