Fremont Cannon
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[edit] Summary
The Fremont Cannon is awarded to each season's winner of the Battle for Nevada, a college football game between the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the University of Nevada, Reno. The team who wins the cannon gets to keep it for a year and paint the wooden carriage in their school's main color: scarlet red for UNLV and navy blue for Nevada. The Wolf Pack fire a cannon after each touchdown or field goal scored at home, but the Fremont Cannon is not currently fired by either team. It was fired in some of the rivalry's earlier matches, up until the mid to late 1990s. Weighing in at 545 pounds, it is regarded by followers of both teams as the largest and most expensive trophy of any rivalry in college sports.
A list of the winners of the trophy can be found in the article detailing the Battle for Nevada.
[edit] History
The idea for a trophy as the prize for the newly arranged intrastate rivalry was first put forward by former UNLV coach Bill Ireland. The Cannon was funded and built by the Nevada Mines Division of the Kennecott Copper Corporation. It is a replica of a howitzer cannon that explorer John C. Fremont's party hauled west and then abandoned in a snowdrift in the Sierra Nevada in late January of 1844. The two schools first played each other in Reno on Thanksgiving Day, 1969, with the Wolf Pack winning 30-28. However, the Cannon was not completed until 1970 when the Rebels won 42-30 in Las Vegas.
In 1978, Wolf Pack running back Frank Hawkins and several other players didn't want to be apart from the Cannon after Nevada's win. That year, head coach Chris Ault convinced airport security in Las Vegas to let several players carry the Cannon onto the team's flight back to Reno in separate pieces; Hawkins himself carried the brass barrell. The Cannon was refurbished in 2000 after its wheels were damaged by UNLV fans during a raucous postgame celebration. The cannon has not been fireable since 1999.
[edit] Results
UNR 17 - UNLV 15
