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and fan experiences."
• USD stoked the fiery competition last fall by erecting a billboard along Interstate 29 in Brookings showing a coyote running down a jackrabbit with the headline, "Have an old friend for dinner." Within a month, Brookings police had to remove a dead coyote found hanging by a rope from the top of billboard.
• Stiegelmeir said it won't be long until fans resurrect the tradition of smuggling in dead jackrabbits or coyotes under their winter coats and tossing them onto the football field or basketball court, "which is not supposed to happen, but it will happen."
• Former SDSU cheerleader Margie Fiedler can't wait for the rivalry to return, and nobody knows the consequences of a tossed coyote more than her.
• In 1976, she was a 20-year-old student cheering on the Jackrabbits men's basketball team when a fellow SDSU fan threw a frozen, 55-pound coyote toward the court that struck her in the head.
• Fiedler was hospitalized with a severe concussion, but she holds onto her fondness for the rivalry.
• She laughs about the yearbook picture showing security guards helping her off the court with the caption: "We just thank God we weren't playing the Bison."
• "All of the rivalry was just good fun stuff," said Fiedler, now a 57-year-old camp director in Montana. "There was never any anger, hatred or horrible things like that. It was just a fun way to get everyone revved up, and it did."
• Former USD defensive lineman Brian Augustine recalled walking up to Coughlin-Alumni Stadium in the 1990s. The visiting team dressed in the basketball arena across North Campus Drive and had to enter the field past the SDSU student section.
• "They loved throwing pennies to your helmet," Augustine said. "I mean, it didn't hurt anything."
• Keith Jensen, an SDSU season-ticket holder for more than 40 years, said he remembers lots of bunnies being tossed out during games but only two coyotes.
• "Too big an animal," he said. "Bunnies are easier to hide."
• But the behavior degraded over the years, he said, and fans venturing into an opposing field or stadium faced a volatile atmosphere.
• "We'd like to win; they'd like to win," said the 78-year-old Jensen. "When you win you've got boasting rights, but it doesn't need to go beyond that."
• Chuck Cecil, a Brookings writer and historian who graduated from SDSU in 1959, said the rivalry evolved over the years from such pranks as fans burning a signature into the middle of the football field the night before a game to rowdiness and nastiness.

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