Every Major US Sports Trophy and What It's Named After

Most major American sports trophies carry a person's name, and most of those people were not players. The Vince Lombardi Trophy honors a coach, the Larry O'Brien a commissioner, the Hart Memorial a doctor who never laced up skates, and the Stanley Cup a British aristocrat who left Canada before the first one was awarded.

Two of the biggest have no name at all. Here is the complete reference — championship hardware first, then the individual awards — with a line on who each namesake actually was.

The Championship and Team Trophies

The Individual Awards

The Namesakes Who Never Played

The pattern that jumps out of those tables is how rarely the honoree was a great player. Hockey is the extreme case.

Dr. David Hart never played hockey at any level. He was a Montreal physician whose son Cecil coached the Canadiens, and he donated the trophy in 1923 because his son asked him to. The league's most prestigious individual award is named after somebody's dad.

Frank Calder, whose name is on the Rookie of the Year trophy, was born in Bristol, England, played rugby, cricket and soccer as a young man, and came to hockey through a Montreal newspaper sports desk. He became the NHL's first president in 1917 and bought a rookie trophy out of his own pocket each year; after he died in 1943 the league made it permanent.

Lady Evelyn Byng was the wife of Viscount Byng of Vimy, Canada's Governor General. She was a hockey fan who thought the sport had grown too violent, so in 1925 she put up a trophy for the player who combined skill with clean play.

Frank J. Selke was an electrician and amateur hockey organizer who never played professionally. He ran the Canadiens for 18 years and built the farm system that produced their 1950s dynasty.

Basketball's biggest trophy fits the pattern too. Larry O'Brien never played professional basketball. He ran John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign, served as Postmaster General under Lyndon Johnson, chaired the Democratic National Committee — his office was the target of the Watergate break-in — and only then became NBA commissioner in 1975. The trophy took his name in 1984, the year he retired.

Even Vince Lombardi, the most famous namesake in American sport, never played a down of professional football. He was an offensive lineman at Fordham, one of the "Seven Blocks of Granite," and then spent his life coaching.

The honorable exceptions are the owners and executives who did play, at least as amateurs: James E. Norris played defense at McGill and won an intermediate championship with the Montreal Hockey Club in 1897 before making his fortune in grain, and Conn Smythe played and coached at the University of Toronto before building the Maple Leafs.

The Ones That Were Renamed, and When

Almost every trophy on this page has a second life. Here are the significant renamings.

• 1970 — the Super Bowl trophy. Originally the World Professional Football Championship Trophy, it was renamed for Vince Lombardi within weeks of his death from cancer in September 1970 and first presented under that name at Super Bowl V.
• 1973 — the Roberto Clemente Award. Created in 1971 as the Commissioner's Award, it was renamed after Clemente died on a relief flight on New Year's Eve 1972.
• 1984 — the Larry O'Brien Trophy. The NBA's original passed-around trophy carried Walter A. Brown's name from 1964; the current permanent trophy debuted in 1977 as the World Championship Trophy and was renamed for O'Brien seven years later.
• 1987 — the Jackie Robinson Award. The Rookie of the Year award started life in 1940 as the J. Louis Comiskey Memorial Award and was renamed on the 40th anniversary of Robinson breaking the color line.
• 1991 — the Pete Rozelle Trophy. The Super Bowl MVP award dates to 1967, but it had no trophy of its own until Super Bowl XXV.
• 1999 — the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year. The NFL Man of the Year award began in 1970; Payton won it in 1977 and it was renamed for him after his death.
• 2002 — the Ted Williams All-Star MVP Award. Previously the Arch Ward Memorial Award, after the sportswriter who invented the All-Star Game.
• 2009 — the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award. David Stern announced the renaming at All-Star Weekend in Phoenix.
• 2010 — the Ted Lindsay Award. The players' MVP award was the Lester B. Pearson Award, after Canada's 14th prime minister, until the NHLPA renamed it for one of its own founders.
• 2017 — the Willie Mays World Series MVP Award.
• 2020 — the MLB MVP. The Baseball Writers' Association of America voted to strip Kenesaw Mountain Landis's name from the plaque. Landis was commissioner from 1920 to 1944, and no Black player appeared in the major leagues during his entire tenure.
• 2022 — six NBA awards at once. MVP became the Michael Jordan Trophy, Defensive Player of the Year the Hakeem Olajuwon Trophy, Rookie of the Year the Wilt Chamberlain Trophy, Sixth Man the John Havlicek Trophy, Most Improved the George Mikan Trophy, and a new Clutch Player award was named for Jerry West. The conference trophies became the Bob Cousy and Oscar Robertson Trophies, with new conference finals MVP awards named for Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.

For the winners themselves, see Every Super Bowl MVP Winner in NFL History, Every NBA Finals MVP Winner in History, Every Conn Smythe Trophy Winner in NHL History, Every Hart Trophy Winner in NHL History and Every WNBA MVP Winner in League History.

The Stanley Cup Is the Outlier

Every other championship trophy on this page was created by a league for its own championship. The Stanley Cup was created by a bored aristocrat 25 years before the NHL existed.

Sir Frederick Arthur Stanley, Lord Stanley of Preston, was Canada's sixth Governor General. His family fell for hockey after watching a game at the 1889 Montreal Winter Carnival, and in 1892 he bought a silver bowl for 10 guineas — about $50 at the time — to be awarded to Canada's top amateur team. The first winner, in 1893, was the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association. Stanley had already sailed back to England by then and never saw a game played for the trophy he donated.

For decades the Cup was a challenge trophy that any qualifying club could compete for. The National Hockey Association took possession in 1910, the NHL became the only league competing for it in 1926, and it only became the NHL's exclusive property by formal agreement in 1947.

Three things still make it unlike anything else in American sport. It is the same physical object, handed from champion to champion, rather than a new casting each year. Every winning player and staff member gets their name engraved on it — no other trophy does that. And because the barrel holds only five bands of 13 teams each, roughly every 13 years the top band is retired to the Hockey Hall of Fame vault to make room, meaning a champion's names stay on the Cup for about 52 to 65 years before being moved. The rules governing custody are strange enough to need their own page: Who Keeps the Stanley Cup After the Final.

The Trophies With No Name at All

Four significant trophies honor nobody.

MLB's Commissioner's Trophy is the odd one out among championship hardware — the only one of the big four with no namesake. It has been awarded since 1967 and has been redesigned several times, but baseball has never attached a person to it, despite having more obvious candidates than any other sport.

The NHL's Presidents' Trophy, for the best regular-season record, honors the office rather than any individual who held it.

The WNBA championship trophy is still unnamed. The league commissioned a full set of new Tiffany & Co. hardware unveiled in 2023, including a redesigned championship trophy and a Finals MVP trophy, and named none of them. The only WNBA award carrying a person's name is the Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award, for the Houston Comets guard who won two titles and died of cancer in 1999 at 32. Whether the championship trophy eventually gets a name is a live conversation among fans of the league.

The NBA Cup, awarded to the in-season tournament winner since 2023, also has no namesake.

Naming conventions change. This page is updated whenever a league renames an award or unveils a new one.

For context on the leagues these trophies belong to, see How Many Teams Are in the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB and Which US Cities Have Teams in All Four Major Leagues.

FAQ

Who is the Super Bowl trophy named after? Vince Lombardi, who coached the Green Bay Packers to victory in the first two Super Bowls. The trophy was called the World Professional Football Championship Trophy until Lombardi died in September 1970 and the NFL renamed it in his honor.

Who was Larry O'Brien? NBA commissioner from 1975 to 1984, and before that a career political operative — Kennedy's campaign director, Postmaster General under Johnson, and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He never played professional basketball.

Which championship trophy is not named after anyone? Major League Baseball's Commissioner's Trophy. It is the only championship trophy in the four major leagues without a person's name attached. The WNBA championship trophy is also unnamed.

Why is the Stanley Cup older than the NHL? Because it was donated in 1892 by Lord Stanley of Preston as a challenge trophy for Canadian amateur clubs, 25 years before the NHL was founded in 1917. It only became the NHL's exclusive prize in 1947.

Did Bill Russell ever win the Finals MVP award named after him? No. The award was created in 1969 — Russell's final season — and Jerry West won the first one. It was renamed for Russell in 2009.

Why did MLB take Kenesaw Mountain Landis's name off the MVP award? The Baseball Writers' Association of America voted in 2020 to remove it. Landis was commissioner from 1920 until his death in 1944, and no Black player appeared in the majors during his entire tenure.

Does the WNBA championship trophy have a name? No. The league unveiled a redesigned Tiffany & Co. trophy in 2023 but has never given it a proper name. The Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award is the only WNBA trophy named after a person.

Which league renames its awards most often? The NBA. In December 2022 it renamed six individual awards and both conference championship trophies in a single announcement, and added two new conference finals MVP awards named for Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.