Southern Ivy is an informal term, and not an official body, that has been used in the U.S. to compare Southern universities to the schools of the northeastern

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

in some way, usually in academic quality or in social prestige. The "Southern Ivy League," referred to as the "Magnolia League", was also a failed attempt to construct an athletic conference with schools that had similar "academic missions and philosophies". Given that the term is colloquial, there is no comprehensive, objective or definitive list of schools that are considered "Southern Ivies".

Magnolia Conference

The effort to create a Southern athletic conference originated during the 1950s.

Harvie Branscomb Bennett Harvie Branscomb (December 25, 1894 – July 23, 1998) was an American theologian and academic administrator. He served as the fourth chancellor of Vanderbilt University, a private university in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1946 to 1963. P ...

, then-chancellor at

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

, originally attempted to establish a rivalry between Vanderbilt and traditional Ivy League schools to foster relationships with academically-oriented schools. The school followed through on this effort and played a game against

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

in October 1948. However, after the Vanderbilt Commodores shut out the Yale Bulldogs, 35-0, Yale said they no longer wanted to play Vanderbilt. This caused Branscomb to call a meeting with the presidents of other Southern private universities in the late 1950s—

Southern Methodist University , mottoeng = "The truth will make you free" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = SACS , academic_affiliations = , religious_affiliation = United Methodist Church , president = R. Gerald Turner , prov ...

(SMU),

Emory University Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

and

Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private university, private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into ...

— where Branscomb suggested they try to establish a new sports conference where small, academically-inclined private schools could compete. p. 220-223:The Southern Ivy League In the early 1960s, the idea for the "Magnolia Conference" gained popularity. In 1963, Tulane was frustrated by its level of competition within the

Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities of ...

since many of the schools had lower academic expectations for football players. They considered withdrawing from the SEC to compete with schools with similar aims. p. 265-6: 1963 attempt to form a southern Ivy League According to the ''

Rice Thresher ''The Rice Thresher'' is the weekly student newspaper of Rice University in Houston, Texas. It was first published in 1916. It has an estimated circulation of 3,000 and is distributed throughout the university and its surrounding areas. The '' ...

'', the era was a time when "the academic disparity between show-me-the-money schools and the schools less inclined to compromise academics was just beginning to become more evident." The "Magnolia Conference" had the vision to "maintain high-end Division I budgets and schedules, while avoiding some of the crasser extremes of the big business of college sports". However, this "Southern Ivy League" never got off the ground. Duke did not want to give up its rivalry with the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...

, and SMU and Rice were not willing to give up their shares of revenue flowing from the then-lucrative

Cotton Bowl Classic The Cotton Bowl Classic (also known as the Cotton Bowl) is an American college football bowl game that has been held annually in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex since January 1, 1937. The game was originally played at its namesake stadium i ...

because of its tie-in with the

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma an ...

Magnolia Conference

Notes

Further reading