Southern Ivy is a term used to describe auniversity in theSouthern United States that is comparable to a university in theIvy League, usually from the perspective of having a similar level ofacademic quality orsocial prestige.[1][2] Unlike the Ivy League, which is an established group of eight universities in theNortheastern United States, there is not a fixed standard for what constitutes a Southern Ivy, and different sources may list different universities, depending on their criteria. The term "Southern Ivy League" is also used to refer to a proposedathletic conference that would have included several Southern Ivies.
Blue: Public;
Red: PrivateThe following universities have appeared in lists of Southern Ivies and top-ranked universities in the Southern United States.
FollowingWorld War II, many small private universities, such as Vanderbilt, began to struggle to compete against larger public universities inAmerican football.[6] In theSoutheastern Conference (SEC), theVanderbilt Commodores, which had fielded competitive teams in the early 20th century, struggled against other teams and by the 1940s was running a deficit in its athletics department.[6] In the late 1940s, Vanderbilt ChancellorHarvie Branscomb hoped to reposition the university's football team as a more low-budget program by creating rivalries with Ivy League universities, and to this end he scheduled a 1948 game against theYale Bulldogs football team.[7] However, when Vanderbilt team beat the Bulldogs by a score of 35–0, Yale declined to play any further games against the Commodores.[7]
Around 1951, Branscomb attempted to organize a newathletic conference that would have been a Southern equivalent of the Ivy League with universities such as Duke, Rice, Tulane, Virginia, andWashington University in St. Louis joining Vanderbilt, though the effort failed, prompting Branscomb to remark that his university was "located in a spot where ivy does not seem to flourish.[8] Later that year,[8] Branscomb proposed a series of changes to the SEC's regulations that would have helped Vanderbilt's teams, but these were rejected by the administrators of the other universities in the conference.[9] In the late 1950s, Branscomb secretly held a meeting with the presidents of five other Southern universities (Duke, Georgia Tech, Rice, Southern Methodist, and Tulane)[10] to discuss forming a new conference, referred to as either the "Southern Ivy League" or the "Magnolia Conference".[11] However, the proposed conference never came to fruition.[11] In the cases of Duke and Georgia Tech, the two universities did not want to jeopardize their in-state rivalries against the University of North Carolina and the University of Georgia, respectively, while Rice and Southern Methodist did not want to give up their share of income from theCotton Bowl Classic.[10] While discussions of a Southern Ivy League persisted, often including Duke, Rice, Southern Methodist, Tulane, and Vanderbilt, the conference never materialized,[12] and by the early 1960s, the plan had been retired.[13]
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