The Michigan–Michigan State football rivalry is an American college football rivalry between the University of Michigan Wolverines and the Michigan State University Spartans. The teams first played in 1898 and have met 114 times. The game has now been played uninterrupted, every year since 1945. The winner of each year's game receives the Paul Bunyan – Governor of Michigan Trophy, a four-foot wooden statue of a lumberjack that was first presented in 1953 to commemorate Michigan State's beginning football competition as a member of the Big Ten Conference.