Kimberly P. Mitchell / USA TODAY NETWORK
You won’t find a more vitriolic rivalry in college football than the one between Michigan and Ohio State, and it’s only natural that a bar in Ann Arbor would serve a beer mocking the Buckeyes. However, it was hit with a legal challenge as a result and was not shy about throwing some shade while filing a response in court.
The football teams at Michigan and Ohio State faced off for the first time in 1897, and they’ve spent more than 125 years cultivating what is not only the fiercest rivalry in college football but one of the most notable ones in all of sports.
The Wolverines currently have the edge with a 62-51-6 lead in the series, and the Michigan undergrads who got their degree last year left Ann Arbor having never seen their team lose to Ohio State thanks to the four-game winning streak they’re riding heading into the 121st meeting between the two schools on November 29th.
It’s safe to assume a good chunk of those students spent some time at The Brown Jug, the South U institution that’s been serving up food and drinks in Ann Arbor since 1936.
The establishment is named for the rivalry trophy given out to the winner of the game between Michigan and Minnesota, but it’s also been referencing the team’s history with Ohio State by selling the “Buckeye Tears” beer it’s had on tap for years—an offering that has sparked the latest round of bad blood between the two schools.
Ann Arbor’s The Brown Jug fired back at Ohio State in a legal battle sparked by “Buckeye Tears” beer
The Brown Jug started selling Buckeye Tears, a light beer it obtains from a local distributor, in 2023, and on August 19, 2024, it decided to file for a federal trademark. However, those plans hit a hitch a little over a year after the application was submitted when Ohio State’s legal team submitted a formal notice of opposition to the claim.
The basis of that challenge was the assertion Buckeye Tears had the potential to “cause confusion” among consumers (which tends to be the primary point of contention in trademark claims) and “dilute the distinctiveness” of its brand, with the school’s attorneys arguing people would assume Ohio State is affiliated with the beer.
Now, I do find it hard to imagine many people would think Ohio State would sell a beer referencing its own tears, and according to MLive, The Brown Jug recently pushed back with a response where it accused Ohio State of deploying a “team of lawyers only when a Michigan small business sought to make a good-natured joke.”
It didn’t stop there, adding:
“[The beer] plays into a perception shared by Michigan fans —particularly in the wake of their football team’s four consecutive victories over Ohio State—that Ohio State and its supporters may on occasion act like sore losers.
Ohio State’s very filing of the opposition validates that perception…
No one in their right mind would ever think that Ohio State is the source of goods inviting the consuming public to feel schadenfreude over the losses of Ohio State athletic teams and the disappointment of Ohio State fans,”
It’s worth noting The Brown Jug isn’t the only business that’s sold a Buckeye Tears beer. A dozen breweries in Pennsylvania owned by Penn State alumni produced a limited run of brews with the same name in 2023, and Perrin Brewing in Comstock Park, Michigan is currently offering its own in the form of a salted chocolate and peanut butter ale.
This isn’t the first time Ohio State has garnered attention over a questionable legal decision, as the school was widely mocked for attempting to trademark “THE” in 2019.