UNC finally has a player in a Tar Heel jersey in the national bobblehead museum

First off: There is a National Bobblehead Museum and Hall of Fame, a collection set to open in downtown Milwaukee featuring more than 5,000 sports figurines with wiggling heads.

Yes, it really exists.

Second: Former Tar Heel quarterback and probable Chicago Bears starter Mitch Trubisky earned a place on the museum’s noble shelves — its first bobblehead wearing a UNC jersey.

Fan reaction was swift and spirited:

“It’s awesome and we all need one,” wrote Nathan Cunningham for the fan site Keeping It Heel.

Trubisky was the No. 1 quarterback for a single season at Carolina. The only other Tar Heel honored with a bobblehead has a much longer history with the school. Last year, the museum unveiled an 8-inch figurine showing Rameses, the UNC mascot, following the Chapel Hill team’s NCAA basketball championship.

But back to the museum, which has created an unsurpassed tribute to collectible dolls.

According to founders Phil Sklar and Bob Novak, bobbleheads can be traced to the 1760s, first appearing in a portrait of the British Queen Charlotte, whose portrait in Buckingham Palace includes a pair of nodding-head figures in the background.

A century later, according to the museum’s history, Russian writer Nikolai Gogol referenced bobbleheads in his short story “The Overcoat,” describing his protagonist as having a neck “like the neck of plaster cats which wag their heads.”

For $40, the Trubisky bobblehead can be bought online, along with the head-wagging likeness of Packers quarterback Brett Favre, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter or True Grit, the Chesapeake Bay Retriever who is the mascot for University of Maryland-Baltimore County, spoiler at last year’s NCAA Tournament.

From Wisconsin, co-founder Sklar notes that the grand hall should be opening in September for any fans who want to bob along.

This story was originally published August 31, 2018 at 11:52 AM.