Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech are Playing for a 100-Year-Old Trophy in Birmingham Bowl

This year the Birmingham Bowl just means more thanks to an old SEC rivalry. The Wramblin’ Wreck of Georgia Tech will take on Vanderbilt this afternoon at 3:30 pm EST on ESPN. The winner of this game will bring home two trophies.

In addition to the Vulcan Statue given each year to the winner of the bowl game, this year the winner will take home a silver-plated cowbell. The Georgia Tech-Vanderbilt Cowbell is one of the oldest rivalry trophies in college football, but it hasn’t been fought for in a few years, and it was almost lost forever.

Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt were rivals in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association and charter members of the SEC. It makes sense that the private institutions in Atlanta and Nashville would have a rivalry, even though it has an atypical origin story.

Ed Cavaleri was a Georgia Tech fanatic who stopped at a hardware store on his way to the game in 1924 to pick up a cowbell. Georgia Tech had won the previous three games by a combined score of 147-0, but suffered a 3-0 upset to Vanderbilt on that day. Someone suggested that Cavaleri give his noisemaker to the winning team, and a tradition was born.

A point of pride for Cavaleri, he attended every game from 1924 to 1967 to award the rivalry trophy. However, as Georgia Tech play-by-play announcer Andy Demetra writes, it was nearly lost on multiple occasions, first in 1935.

“I’d just left the stadium, was taking the bell along to have it engraved. On a side street, near the stadium, two fellows jumped me. One pushed me down, the other grabbed the bell,” he told the Associated Press in 1964.

According to his son Ed Jr., Cavaleri posted a notice of the missing cowbell at the Georgia Tech YMCA. A pair of Tech students eventually came forward, telling him the bell was at the home of a friend in North Carolina. It was returned hours before the 1937 game.

(The cowbell didn’t miss much in the interim. The 1936 game ended in a 0-0 tie.)

More shenanigans would follow. Another time at Nashville’s Dudley Stadium, Cavaleri set the bell down during a stoppage in play. When he reached down to pick it up, a ne’er-do-well had run off with it. The following day, in response to urgent pleas on the radio, someone dropped it off on the steps of Nashville’s WSM radio.

Andy Demetra for Al.com

Georgia Tech left the SEC following the 1964 season after a dispute with Alabama, effectively ending the rivalry. They lead the series 20-15-3 and have only played four times since 1967. Vanderbilt has not taken home the cowbell since 1941. Diego Pavia and Co. are 3-point underdogs, seeking their first bowl win since 2014.