Episode 2: Seventy-Four Meetings and an Anvil

Episode summary

Porter beat Chippewa Valley State 24–20 in this year’s Forge Bowl, holding on with a goal-line stand in the final minute in front of about 4,500 people at Millwright Stadium during Millrace Week. It was Porter’s second straight win, and the anvil stays in the Ironclad Fieldhouse concourse for another year. Chippewa Valley State still leads the series 39–33–2 in 74 meetings.

Ray Gutzmer, in his tenth season as head coach and the longest-tenured head coach in the department, explains the final series from the sideline: what the defense was told, who made the stop, and why he did not watch the last snap. Marcus Webb, who ran for 247 yards against Chippewa Valley State in 2000 — still the game record — remembers the six-game Porter winning streak from 1996 to 2001 and the year the team bus got stuck behind a manure spreader on the county highway.

The middle of the episode is history: the first game in 1948, played on a county fairground field in ankle-deep mud (Chippewa Valley State 6, Porter 0); the 138-pound anvil from the Porter Manual Training School blacksmith shop, mounted on white oak by Founders Hall machinists in 1966; the custom of one hammer strike per point of margin, retired after the horn chipped in 1987; and the seven-inch snow game of 2014, decided 5–3 by a safety and a field goal.

Chapters

Selected transcript

An excerpt, lightly edited for reading. The full speaker-labeled transcript is in your podcast app’s transcript view, or email podcast@uwporterfalls.edu for an accessible document.

Abe Tollefsrud: Coach, fourth down, the ball is inside the two, under a minute left. What did you say in the huddle?

Ray Gutzmer: Nothing. I didn’t go out there. The defensive coordinator called it, and the linebackers had already figured out what was coming before he did. By that point in the game my job is mostly to stand still and not distract anybody.

Corinne Lacasse: Did you watch?

Ray Gutzmer: I watched the kicker’s shoes. He was standing next to me. When he jumped, I knew.

Corinne Lacasse: Marcus, you played in four of these.

Marcus Webb: And won four. That was the middle of the six-in-a-row. I tell people I won six. The first two were before I got here, but I was in the stands for one of them, so I count it.

Abe Tollefsrud: The 247 yards in 2000. Does that still come up?

Marcus Webb: Every summer. I run a youth camp, and every summer some kid’s dad tells him about it, and the kid looks at me like I’m a hundred years old. What I tell them is the same thing I said at the induction. Every one of those yards, five other guys made possible. The left guard that year blocked the same linebacker for three hours. Nobody remembers his name, and they should.

Corinne Lacasse: Tell us his name.

Marcus Webb: He’d kill me. He’s a dairy inspector now. He knows where I live.

Ray Gutzmer: That’s the program, by the way. The record is nice. The dairy inspector is the point.

Links mentioned

• The Forge Bowl — series record, the anvil and notable games
• Football
• Marcus Webb, Athletics Hall of Fame
• Athletics Hall of Fame
• Porter wins the 2024 Forge Bowl (news)
• Athletics staff directory
• Game day guide