For the little trophy that could, it was the longest odyssey covering the shortest distance.

Stashed away, hidden deep in the recesses of a dark, damp, dusty closet, the cold shadows aptly fulfilled the destiny of the Wooden Boot.

Hastily designed to be presented to the winner of the annual matchup between Louisiana and Louisiana-Monroe, the trophy was commissioned to provide that “little extra” between the two in-state schools. Coaches were supposed to motivate their players about bragging rights. Players’ hands were supposed to clutch it in sweet victory.

It never took off. Thus, whisking the wooden wonder on a wonted, 20-year journey where it disappeared almost as swiftly as it appeared.

Why then-ULM Athletic Director Bruce Hanks had the Wooden Boot commissioned made sense.

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In 2001, ULM joined the newly established Sun Belt Conference. Hanks believed generating interest among some of the teams it would be annually competing against could be the perfect selling point for its fan base and football program.

The following year for the matchup with the Ragin’ Cajuns, Hanks had the trophy — an oak award in the shape of Louisiana with a faux gold football on a plaque with stars designating Monroe and Lafayette on another state map, even down to a set of holographic hands catching a football — constructed.

“It wasn’t a very expensive trophy."

There were plans to have one made for the annual game with Arkansas State as well with an arrow design, playing off both of their nicknames at the time, the Indians. But ULM was so far in debt that there was no money for making grandiose objects. For Hanks, the trophy was symbolic anyway.

“The cost was not important. It was the extra incentive, that it means something with these natural rivalries,” Hanks said. “I thought it made a lot of sense to have some type of traditional trophy. It gives you something to create interest if one or both teams are not having a great year.”

Despite Hanks’ best effort, the sentiment between Louisiana and ULM never came close to the proper level of “rivalry” he tried to generate with the trophy. The two schools had already been playing annually for the better part of 50 years, so history was already there.

But down in Lafayette, ULM was never seen through the rivalry lens.

“That rivalry, in my opinion, wasn’t big,” then UL football coach Rickey Bustle said. “I tried to get (my players) to look at it as a rivalry. But I think it was more a rivalry for ULM more than our kids. There wasn’t that extra that needed to be there.”

In his first season as Louisiana’s coach in 2002, Bustle took his team up to Monroe to play the then-Indians in a trophy game. One problem: the Cajuns weren’t aware that it was a trophy game.

“I never heard anything about it. I don’t remember seeing it,” Bustle said. “I was (at UL) for a couple of years before I had heard about it just in passing. But as we moved on, I don’t ever remember our guys celebrating with it or it being a thing.”

There was no talk about the Wooden Boot and the local media never asked Bustle about it.

Hanks admitted that the schools failed in promoting the trophy. The idea was to have it exchange hands when the other team would win.

ULM won the game in 2002, the only public appearance of the Wooden Boot. ULM won the next two years. UL beat ULM in 2005 and Bustle insists that if the trophy was still around that season, that it never made its way to Lafayette.

ULM coach Bobby Keasler resigned three games into the 2002 season and Hanks named then-defensive coordinator Mike Collins the interim coach.

He had coached the Indians to a couple of wins before the season’s end showdown with UL at Malone Stadium. ULM beat the Cajuns 34-10 and the players did, in fact, celebrate with the Wooden Boot.

That would be Collins' last game as ULM's head coach. He left the following spring, headed down to Baton Rouge to join Nick Saban’s staff, but his time in Monroe wasn’t finished.

More than a decade later, Matt Viator brought Collins back as DC when he was hired as ULM head coach in 2016. As Collins returned to campus and was getting his office set up, he was rummaging through some closets in the athletic facility. Amidst other forgotten keepsakes and various items, there was the Wooden Boot, the trophy from 2002.

“They didn’t think anything of it but to throw it in a closet,” Collins said. “Damn, none of them ever beat the Cajuns. When I found it, I was like, ‘by god I'm bringing it home.’ ”

Collins didn’t understand why someone had stowed the trophy away. Tradition should matter, Collins said, and that trophy specifically means a lot to him.

“It’s special to me for a lot of reasons. One, I was the head coach for that game and two, we beat them at our place. It was a big win for our kids,” Collins said. “I was glad to be able to find it.”

Before the Wooden Boot found its way to Collins’ den inside his house on Lake D’Arbonne, it did sit behind the reception desk in the lobby at Malone Stadium for a while before making its way to the trainers' room for some time.

But no one seems to remember when — or why — the Wooden Boot was shunned to the shadows.

Maybe if UL had won in 2003, triggering the Wooden Boot exchanging hands, the trophy would’ve caught on.

But the reason it never gained any traction, Hanks said, was because he left the ULM’s AD post in 2004 and then Louisiana Athletic Director Nelson Schexnayder resigned in July 2005, three months prior to the Cajuns winning a Battle on the Bayou game for the first time since the inception of the trophy.

With transition and staff turnover at both institutions, there was no commitment on either side to continue with the Wooden Boot. Within a few short years, the trophy disappeared.

It became the shortest-lived tradition.

Now, in the warm light, the Wooden Boot rests. Perched on a shelf inside an open chest that contains Collins’ most treasured coaching mementos in the den, the forgotten trophy has found its home.

The one person that cared about the trophy now holds it dear, proudly displaying it.

It's where the Wooden Boot was meant to be all along.

Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers and Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers and Cajuns coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU/UL athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.