About a month ago, it was announced the University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks will be leaving the Big Sky Conference and join the North Dakota State Bison in the Missouri Valley Football Conference and Summit League.

With the excitement of the move and the reigniting of an old flame with the Bison, we now need to consider what the two teams will compete for.

In a team effort with the Dakota Student’s counterparts at NDSU,  The Spectrum,  we decided a new trophy is in order. Taking a look back in history, these two teams competed for “The old Nickel Trophy,” an award that is prominently displaying the Fighting Sioux logo.

Since UND has undergone a name and logo change, the display of the former logo is no longer relevant to our program.

We decided it would be best to get our schools’ inputs in a new trophy.

Now it’s time to call out to our readers to help us in creating a new name and design for that will meet the expectations for the oldest competition in the nation’s football rival.Show us

Before the football competition can begin, we’ve set up a little competition of our own with the team at the Spectrum.

Until 5 p.m. March 24, we will have an open period for anyone in NoDak Nation — students, staff, faculty, alumni, area residents, etc. — to submit and show off their work.

We’ll take sketches, drawings, computer renderings, models, whatever you have. Our NDSU counterparts will be doing the same at their school.

Feel free to submit your work with us by emailing [email protected], or by submitting a  physical copy at The Dakota Student office, located in the basement floor of the Memorial Union.

Once preliminary entries have been submitted, a board comprised of The Dakota Student editors will choose our top three entries to move into the next phase.

The second phase will be to bring the top entries of both schools together and have community members from both campuses vote for their favorite.

The winner will be chosen by the people, and we will officially recommend this to be the trophy for which the two programs will compete.

To kick off the campaign, some suggested names for the new trophy by Casey McCarty, head news editor of The Spectrum, include Red River Rumble, The Green Jug, The Governor’s Cup and The Wood Chipper.

Allyson Bento is the sports editor for Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected]