Photo of the Palladium trophy in the making!

[BlueRaiderPride]

This is an updated photo of the Middle Tennessee v. Troy "Palladium Trophy". It was just posted on the Middle Tennessee messageboard by one of our rivalry project team members.

There are 8 phots in the album. It looks very impressive!

http://community.webshots.com/photo/188351486/193476149hqdwmj

[graymoon]

wow that thing is huge! cool

[troymarkus]

I'm glad to see the project is progressing. After our meeting in Troy I hadn't heard a thing!! I'm out of the loop. Who is making it? Is the MTSU SGA on board? Is our SGA still cooperating? Fill me in bro!

[BlueRaiderPride]

I'm glad to see the project is progressing. After our meeting in Troy I hadn't heard a thing!! I'm out of the loop. Who is making it? Is the MTSU SGA on board? Is our SGA still cooperating? Fill me in bro!

Going into that meeting in Troy I was not aware that the statue was already being made. Apparently the woman carving the statue has been working on it since May. That meeting was in July. The woodcarver is out of Atlanta. One of my associates, Chad Woods, had already put a $500 down payment for construction of the trophy before I really knew about it. That's why I mentioned something about getting someone to do this for us to Barbara Patterson and Ryan Spry. I was not aware of Chad already sealed a deal to have one done.

The cost of the statue is $1500 total. Chad already put $500 down so that leaves us with $1000 to come up with before November. Someone gave the idea of setting up a Paypal account (which has been done) so that anyone can contribute to the cost. That way several years down the road those individual fans can tell their kids or grandkids that they helped to make the Middle Tennessee and Troy football game the spectacle that I we know it will be here really soon.

You may also like to know that Chad sent a letter to officials at both universities and he received wonderful accolades from Dr. Finch, Faculty Advisor to the SGA at Middle Tennessee State as well as Dr. Hawkins, Chancellor of Troy University.

These are indeed exciting times ahead. And I cannot wait until November. Even if one or both of these schools has a bad year (it's lookin' that way for us anyway) I think we can make this worth anyone's while to attend simply due to all the things that will go on around this game that involves all the fans and students of both schools.

The foundation for this rivalry has been layed in eleven previous meetings making it the oldest rivalry in the Sun Belt Conference.

Now, we have the opportunity to build on that foundation starting with this season! It's going to be a blast, and I'm looking forward to returning to Troy in November! Until then, best wishes to Troy on a successful season.

[BlueRaiderPride]

wow that thing is huge! cool

Well, I don't know if you can consider it "huge" unless you consider a 2 1/2 foot statue huge. Those photos are extreme closeups and may make the object in the pictures look bigger than what they really are.[/b]