This is the Mangolia Conference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ivy
Proposed by Vanderbilt’s Chancellor Harvie Branscomb after the Vanderbilt Commodores destroyed the Yale Bulldogs 38-0 in a football game and Yale refused to play against Vanderbilt again, the Mangolia Conference attempted to establish sports conference where small, academically inclined private schools could compete.
If it had been incepted it would have included at the time:
-Duke
-Vanderbilt
-Rice
-Southern Methodist University
-Tulane
Do you believe is such an idea came to transpire, would colleges such as Vanderbilt and Duke be held much higher in prestige and notoriety in the nation, possibly diminishing the Ivy brand?
Sorry for the typical prestige-whorish post.
No, it would not.
The hypothetical alternative to the Ivy League would have to be:
1). Stanford - Harvard (best overall)
2). MIT - Princeton (best for STEM)
3). Duke - Yale (undergrad focused)
4). Chicago - Columbia (social sciences)
5). Hopkins - Penn (medical research)
6). NU - Brown (both have programs in liberal medical education - this one is a stretch)
7). Berkeley - Cornell (large and state-funded)
8). Vanderbilt - Dartmouth (fraternities)
It’s never going to happen for a variety of reasons but the Magnolia League would not be an appropriate substitute.
I do wish it had happened, because it would have challenged the Ivy League. Now don’t get me wrong, I hate the term Ivy League, because people hugely misunderstand what it is and what it means. However, if the Magnolia League was formed, it would have potentially taken attention away from the Ivy League. However, I would take out SMU, then add Emory, Wake Forest, and maybe a couple more schools. While it’s just a sports conference (just like the Ivy League) I think that filling this league up with academically strong schools in the area would pose a challenge to the Ivy League, then perhaps make the general public realize that it’s not what they think it is.
I suspect it would also have ended up including Wake Forest and Baylor had it come about (and maybe Belmont/Rhodes/Furman too? Or [long shot] Hopkins?).
Would it have been considered equal to the ivies? Not for research, but possibly for undergraduate education.
And, if anything, I think the Ivy/Non-Ivy matchups would look like this:
Harvard=Stanford
Princeton=Duke
Yale=Chicago
Columbia=Hopkins
Cornell=MIT
Dartmouth=Vanderbilt
Penn=Northwestern
Brown=Rice (weakest alignment)
@kaarboer I agree with your assessment on Duke and Princeton, unlike @NerdyChica’s comparison with Duke and Yale. Duke (who transformed Duke from a dilapidated divinity school to a research powerhouse with his tobacco money) initially tried to purchase Princeton University, but after being denied, Duke set out to build another Princeton, hence its architecture.
@NerdyChica
Your scenario is ridiculous. It would be impossible for a college sports conference to include teams from California, Mass, and TX… That’s why the Magnolia League includes the teams that it does - they make sense geographically.
Although having the athletic conference would likely pose too many logistical issues, I think the “Magnolia League” could still be created. There could be academic competitions, debate tournaments, chess tournaments, quiz bowl, school spirit competition (?), etc. and the school with the most points could get some sort of prize. The host school could rotate each year. The schools could still brand themselves as a Magnolia League school.
-Duke
-Vanderbilt
-Virginia
-UNC
-Wake Forest
-Rice
-Tulane
-(additional school)
Other possibilities:
-Emory/WashU
-Georgetown/Hopkins
-Davidson/W&L
-UT-Austin
-SMU/TCU
@CzarWinter, your argument that Duke is more analogous to Princeton than Yale is valid only if granted the questionable assumption that a school’s identity is ENTIRELY ascertainable from its architecture.
@TheEssayGuy
http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2013/10/30/crafting-our-gothic-wonderland#.VabbGPlViko
http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/uarchives/history/articles/princeton
(Obviosuly Duke downplayed the connection for school pride, but you get the point)
And it was just one piece of evidence for my argument, the architecture, it isn’t what my argument is entirely base on.
@jackrabbit14 I don’t recall saying that my scenario was even remotely plausible. Please be more respectful.
@CzarWinter That is an apocryphal story.
CzarWinter,
University Athletic Association (UAA) is collectively stronger than those five schools. If UAA hasn’t diminished Ivy, your “Southern Ivy” wouldn’t have. It’s a stupid idea, at least to Duke