A HISTORY OF THE GREAT TOTEM
A colorful Native American totem pole named after a dance move tells the story of a 39-year rivalry between Tech and Middle Tennessee State Teachers College. It’s been to the White House and the streets of Paris. Today, few at Tech know where it is.
Shinny Ninny’s story starts in the fall of 1960. That year, MTSC’s SGA president Stanley Rogers and Tech’s SGA president Sherman Newcomb, ’61 mathematics decided there should be a trophy to symbolize the rivalry between schools.
“We contacted Fred Harvey Jr., who had just returned from Alaska,” said Rogers, who had been going to his department store for years. “He had a bunch of items he was willing to donate, one of which was a 50-plus year old totem pole.”
Harvey was the manager of Harvey’s, a popular Nashville department store.
Middle has always called the trophy “Harvey.” Tech students decided on a different name.
“Halfback Joe Mac Jaques would flop down and do what he called the ‘shin-a-ninny’ on the sidelines after a touchdown,” said James McMillan, ’62 industrial technology. “He’d have to really psych himself up to perform his fit. Everyone started calling it the ‘shin-a-ninny’ because of him.”
The totem passed to the winner of each year’s rivalry football game. Tech won the first two football games with Shinny Ninny on the line.
The trophy’s transfer was supposed to be peaceful every year, in the vein of other famous college football rivalries, but it shifted immediately into a circle of kidnappings and returns.
In November 1961, Shinny Ninny vanished for the first time. “Sidelines,” Middle’s newspaper, reported a disappearance of “the ‘Totem Pole’ from the TPI trophy room.” After the 1972 football game, the Oracle reported a similar story.
In 1983, Shinny Ninny disappeared from Tech’s bookstore. This time the totem never showed up in Murfreesboro.
In the months following the disappearance, photos of Shinny around the world, including Washington, D.C., Paris and Key West, showed up at the Oracle.
A letter from a “committee of six” demanded a donation of $20,000 from both schools to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis in exchange for the pole’s return. The letter threatened to “reduce one Alaskan totem pole to a 32-pound bag of sawdust” otherwise.
In 1987, the totem returned intact to Tech, with the initials of the six carved into the back. The Golden Eagles lost the rivalry game that year, so the totem went to the Blue Raiders.
Less than 24 hours after the hand off, two “assailants” wearing Greek letters allegedly forced their way into Middle’s student government office and took the totem from the president. Both the Oracle and the Eagle suspected an inside job.
The “Totem Bowl” rivalry ended in 1998 when Middle moved to a different athletic division. Tech’s last win was in 1997.
The totem pole sits behind a glass display case in MTSU’s Hall of Fame building, along with an honorary diploma.