Warren Spady, an art student at the University of Oregon in the 1950s, is the creator of the Platypus Trophy. It's the trophy at the center of the Civil War rivalry.

Spady joined me on my radio show on Tuesday to talk about it.

The trophy is two feet wide and 18 inches tall. And it was sculpted from maple in 1959 by Spady, who said, "I never got paid, got no recognition."

It was stolen from the Gill Coliseum trophy case by an OSU fraternity but was recovered. Then, in 1962, someone apparently broke in again and stole it for a second time. It then ended up in the hands of unnamed water polo players at Oregon, who put a new brass plate on it and turned it into their own trophy.

Forty years later, Dan Williams, a one-time Ducks student-body president and Oregon athletics department administrator located the trophy in a case at old Mac Court. For the last several years, it's returned to the game as the official trophy.

Spady, now 82, said it took him a month to sculpt the trophy.

"I never completely finished it," he said. "The feet, for instance, I made them stuck in mud. I had to quickly finish it up."

Spady thinks the trophy should be exchanged at mid-field by the winning and losing teams. It's current in possession of the winning team's alumni association.

Listen to the full interview here: