Whitmer won big in last year’s U-M, OSU wager
Governors are sitting out betting on this year’s game
LANSING − Amid the hoopla surrounding Saturday’s college football battle of the unbeatens between the University of Michigan and Ohio State University, one item missing, as of late Wednesday, is a promotional wager between Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her Ohio counterpart, Gov. Mike DeWine.
Maybe Whitmer doesn’t want to rub it in, after enjoying Cincinnati-area black raspberry chip ice cream, Columbus cream puffs, Cleveland chocolate-covered pretzels, and Perrysburg buckeye candies – all courtesy of DeWine – as a result of Michigan trouncing Ohio State 42-27 in last year’s game.
Maybe it’s because Whitmer, an MSU graduate, remains a
Spartan at heart.
Or maybe she doesn’t want to push her luck, mindful that last year’s U-M win snapped eight years of dominance by the Buckeyes.
Whatever the reasons for Whitmer and DeWine sitting this one out, both took part in a decades-old tradition last year, using 21st-century media, when Whitmer used her Twitter account to tag DeWine and challenge him to a chance to win Michigan cherry treats from Glen Arbor, by gambling on the Buckeyes. Similar wagers between state governors go back at least as far as the 1930s.
It has never been the actual payoff that matters in these occasional bets, which sometimes involve the governor (or U.S. senator, or what have you) on the losing end wearing the opposing team’s colors or singing the opponent’s fight song. Instead, the wagers are all about a public expression of pride in the governor’s state, promotion of locally made goods and farm products, and a vote of confidence in the home team.
In fact, the all-time classic governors’ wager may have happened in 1953, and was never paid off at all. It was over who would win the title in what was then college football’s Skyline Conference.
New Mexico Gov. Edwin Mechem bet the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, in the northern
reaches of his state. Wyoming Gov. C.J. Rogers countered with the Tetons, a mountain range that rises more than 7,000 feet above the valley of Jackson Hole.
“If you win, you’ll have to move ‘em,” Rogers told Mechem, according to the Associated Press.
Perhaps both governors were fortunate when neither team took the title, won by Utah. Both mountain ranges remain in place.
Michigan governors, Whitmer included, have been no slouches when it comes to promoting the state through rivalry wagers.
When U-M faced Ohio State in 2000, thenGov. John Engler offered a Michigan Christmas tree decorated by Bronner’s of Frankenmuth. Then-Ohio Gov. Bob Taft offered three stuffed bears from the Ohio River Bear Co., one for each of Engler’s three triplet daughters.
Michigan won that game, in Columbus, 3826.
Michigan governors haven’t always been on the winning side of these bets. In 2009, thenGov. Jennifer Granholm was photographed in a University of North Carolina jersey and hat, ready to bite into a doughnut with Carolina blue icing. That was to settle her college basketball bet with then-North Carolina Gov. Beverly
Perdue after the Tar Heels defeated MSU 89-72 in the men’s tournament championship game.
In 1978, then-Gov. William Milliken had to deliver a gallon of Vermontville syrup to thenKentucky Gov. Julian Carroll, that time to pay off an MSU basketball loss to the University of Kentucky.
For the 1984 Sugar Bowl, then-Michigan Gov. James Blanchard wagered a bushel of Michigan apples on U-M. Then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace countered with 100 pounds of Alabama peanuts, on Auburn.
“Gov. Wallace knows that 100 pounds of Alabama peanuts are worth more but he had to offer it because both governors know Auburn has the better team,” Wallace spokesman Billy Joe Camp told the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, Georgia.
Talking smack never came back to bite Wallace, as Auburn prevailed in the defensive struggle, 9-7.
A bushel of apples was also the wager of choice when former Michigan Gov. John Swainson picked the Detroit Tigers to defeat the New York Yankees for the American League pennant in 1961. Swainson asked New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to counter with “an equal amount of New York State’s finest agricultural products.”
But the Yankees won, so the Michigan apples went to New York.
Semantic allowances were made for former
Michigan Gov. George Romney, whose Mormon religion did not allow gambling, United Press International reported in 1965.
California Gov. Edmund (Pat) Brown at the time told the wire service he had accepted a “non-wager” with Romney over the outcome of the 1966 Rose Bowl pitting MSU against UCLA. Romney offered 50 meals for hungry Californians.
“The terms of your non-wager are altogether agreeable,” Brown said in a telegram.
Non-wager or not, Romney had to pay it off when UCLA won in an upset, 14-12.
Brown was also a party to a 1965 professional football wager that excited Rockefeller to the point that he waxed poetic.
Brown put at risk “one box of assorted fresh California fruit” for a chance to win a crate of “excellent New York State apples,” AP reported. The subject of the wager was the American Football League title game between the Buffalo Bills and the San Diego Chargers.
“When the game’s final whistle
Makes the stadium mute,
You’ll be left to your sighing
While I’m munching your fruit,” Rockefeller penned.
That doggerel would have sounded worse had the Bills not pounded the Chargers 23-0. The following year, the AFL joined the NFL to create what became today’s Super Bowl championship.
Sports betting is legal in Michigan and many other jurisdictions today. But it wasn’t always that way, and the friendly and lighthearted wagers have even landed governors in trouble with the law.
In 1935, Iowa Gov. Clyde Herring and Minnesota Gov. Floyd Olson each wagered “a prize porker” on a rivalry football game between the universities of Iowa and Minnesota, the Associated Press reported.
Trouble ensued when Iowa lost and Herring dutifully delivered a pig to the Minnesota statehouse.
Virgil Case, secretary of the Des Moines Social Justice club, filed gambling charges against Herring and said he would do the same for Olson, under a federal statute prohibiting interstate transport of the “fruits of gambling.” Governors “should set an example for other citizens,” Case said.
Case was serious about his case, but the governors played the whole thing for laughs.
“It looks as if I might have to write out a pardon for myself,” Herring quipped.
Herring then retained Olson – a former county attorney in Minneapolis – as his lawyer, and had the charge dismissed, United Press reported.
“Olson contended that there was no bet because I never had a chance to win,” Herring told reporters. “He further informed officials here that the hog I took him was a worthless, underfed, no-good swine, and that consequently nothing of value changed hands.”