At long last, Gophers get to take Paul Bunyan's Axe on the road to meet U fans

In trying to create demand for a product, scarcity is a wonderful tool.

For Gophers athletics, it's an unfortunate byproduct of a football reality — but administrators are happily milking every opportunity to exhibit Paul Bunyan's Axe.

The department announced this week a plan for a revamped "Coaches Caravan" at which several high-profile coaches will make four stops around Minnesota.

As part of those ticketed events in Owatonna (May 21), Dellwood (May 22), Chaska (May 28) and Alexandria (June 12), fans can take pictures with Paul Bunyan's Axe.

The Axe also will make a separate nine-stop tour in greater Minnesota throughout June as the U attempts to reacquaint the state's population with the traveling trophy awarded to the winner of the annual football game between the Gophers and Badgers.

From the fall of 2004 when the Badgers defeated the Gophers in Madison until late 2018, Minnesotans basically had two options for viewing the Axe: Catch a glimpse of it as Badgers players rushed to grab it at the conclusion of one of 14 consecutive victories over the Gophers, or cross the border sometime during the year to go pay it a visit.

Those choices for many were akin to, "Would you rather have your left eye or your right eye gouged out?"

The Axe has been in Minnesota's possession since then, and it's been busy, said Mills Armbruster, assistant director of marketing for the Gophers.

"It's always on the move. It's still as popular as it was the day after the game," Armbruster said. "I've worked probably 10 events where the Axe has been. We've had lines out the door. We've had people waiting three hours just to get a photograph with it."

Most of those events, though, have been in the Twin Cities — hence the road trip in June to bring it to a wider audience. All of this reminds me of 2014, when the Gophers defeated Michigan to claim the Little Brown Jug for the first time since 2005 and only the fourth time since 1967 — the last year, by the way, that Minnesota won all three major trophy rivalry games with Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa (Floyd of Rosedale).

Fans came to TCF Bank Stadium later in the week to view the Jug, and it, too, was later paraded around the state for all who wished to see it.

In revisiting what I wrote at the time, I found an optimistic Gophers fan quoted at the end of the story.

The Gophers lost the Jug the very next year in a 29-26 heartbreaker. They also failed to get it back in 2017, the only other time they have played Michigan since 2014. Their next chance? Oct. 17, 2020, at TCF Bank Stadium.

But Wisconsin is on the schedule every season — this year in the Nov. 30 regular-season finale at TCF Bank Stadium, one that will break the all-time series deadlock, which sits at 60-60-8.

Maybe keeping the Axe in Minnesota — and staging more photo ops — will become more of a routine as the years go on?