{"id":652,"date":"2015-04-01T17:56:38","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T17:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/?p=652"},"modified":"2018-02-08T13:36:06","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T13:36:06","slug":"the-legend-of-shinny-ninny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/the-legend-of-shinny-ninny\/","title":{"rendered":"The Legend of Shinny Ninny"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shinny-ninny\"<\/a>
\nA HISTORY OF THE GREAT TOTEM<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019s been to the White House and the streets of Paris. Today, few at Tech know where it is.<\/p>\n

Shinny Ninny\u2019s story starts in the fall of 1960. That year, MTSC\u2019s SGA president Stanley Rogers and Tech\u2019s SGA president Sherman Newcomb, \u201961 mathematics decided there should be a trophy to symbolize the rivalry between schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe contacted Fred Harvey Jr., who had just returned from Alaska,\u201d said Rogers, who had been going to his department store for years. \u201cHe had a bunch of items he was willing to donate, one of which was a 50-plus year old totem pole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harvey was the manager of Harvey\u2019s, a popular Nashville department store.<\/p>\n

Middle has always called the trophy \u201cHarvey.\u201d Tech students decided on a different name.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalfback Joe Mac Jaques would flop down and do what he called the \u2018shin-a-ninny\u2019 on the sidelines after a touchdown,\u201d said James McMillan, \u201962 industrial technology. \u201cHe\u2019d have to really psych himself up to perform his fit. Everyone started calling it the \u2018shin-a-ninny\u2019 because of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The totem passed to the winner of each year\u2019s rivalry football game. Tech won the first two football games with Shinny Ninny on the line.<\/p>\n

The trophy\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In November 1961, Shinny Ninny vanished for the first time. \u201cSidelines,\u201d Middle\u2019s newspaper, reported a disappearance of \u201cthe \u2018Totem Pole\u2019 from the TPI trophy room.\u201d After the 1972 football game, the Oracle reported a similar story.<\/p>\n

In 1983, Shinny Ninny disappeared from Tech\u2019s bookstore. This time the totem never showed up in Murfreesboro.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

A letter from a \u201ccommittee of six\u201d demanded a donation of $20,000 from both schools to St. Jude Children\u2019s Research Hospital in Memphis in exchange for the pole\u2019s return. The letter threatened to \u201creduce one Alaskan totem pole to a 32-pound bag of sawdust\u201d otherwise.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Less than 24 hours after the hand off, two \u201cassailants\u201d wearing Greek letters allegedly forced their way into Middle\u2019s student government office and took the totem from the president. Both the Oracle and the Eagle suspected an inside job.<\/p>\n

The \u201cTotem Bowl\u201d rivalry ended in 1998 when Middle moved to a different athletic division. Tech\u2019s last win was in 1997.<\/p>\n

The totem pole sits behind a glass display case in MTSU\u2019s Hall of Fame building, along with an honorary diploma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s been to the White House and the streets of Paris. Today, few at Tech know where it is. Shinny Ninny\u2019s story starts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-spring15"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1187,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions\/1187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}