Blue Raiders

The trophy outlasted most of what else changed at Middle Tennessee State University in that stretch, which is its own kind of measure.

The program's football team traces to 1911, though it took until the following year to play its first game under L. T. "Mutt" Weber. The championships thinned out after that, though a Conference USA East Division title arrived in 2018 to show the habit hadn't entirely gone.

Kevin Byard came through the program before making an All-Pro career at safety in the NFL, one of the few names from Murfreesboro that means something outside Tennessee. The team plays at Floyd Stadium, named for Johnny "Red" Floyd, in front of a capacity that runs to roughly 30,000, and it has made a habit of bowl games without ever turning that habit into dominance — fourteen appearances, six wins, results that swing from a Camellia Bowl victory to lean years without a trip at all.

None of it carries the weight of the Tennessee Tech fixture. The Golden Eagles sit close enough down the road that the rivalry needed a physical object to organize itself around, and Harvey is what they settled on — a piece of wood that travels a short distance and matters more than the standings usually suggest it should.