President
George H.W. Bush

His Holiness
Pope John Paul II

Harrison Ford

Nicole Kidman
& Halle Berry

Scarlett Johansson

Facebook Custom Award

Women in Hollywood
Custom Awards

World Series of Poker
Custom Award

Netflix Custom Award

Mid-America Classic Custom Perpetual Trophy

Mid-America Classic Custom Trophy


Bennett Awards designed and produced a custom perpetual trophy for the Mid-America Classic, a football rivalry between Eastern Illinois and Illinois State that spans more than a century. In 2011, these two Illinois college football teams met for the 100th time. To commemorate this milestone and long-standing series, the two schools have rebranded the annual rivalry the “Mid-America Classic”.

A key piece of this rebranding effort involved the creation of a custom perpetual traveling trophy. Each year, the victorious team will get to keep the trophy at their school for the remainder of the year, until the following year’s football game.

Bennett Awards created a new, unique custom trophies design for this event standing approximately 2’ tall. The top of the traveling trophy features a custom pewter sculpture award. This sculpture awards design is derived from the Mid-America Classic logo. A hollow, impressionistic football shape surrounds a cut-out image of the state of Illinois. Wrapped around the football are two pewter ribbons – one in each school’s color. These ribbons end in star shapes at the location of each school on the Illinois image.

This unique sculpture award is mounted on a custom-made black hardwood base shaped like a pyramid. At the top of each side of the base, there are custom plates of the Mid-America Classic logo. Beneath these plates are smaller rectangular engraved plates customized with the scores of each game in the history of the series. There is also space to add additional engraved plates at the conclusion of future games.

This perpetual award was unveiled on August 2, 2011, at a joint press conference held in Urbana, Illinois.