Commentary: Magnolia League's potential too good to pass up
Editor's Note: This article's original content has been modified.Let's be honest: The Rice-University of Houston rivalry is pretty lame. I'm not saying that I don't enjoy swiping the Bayou Bucket from the Cougs. It's just that, well, the Rice and Houston match-up is a little one sided, especially considering how well our football team did last year.
Now, imagine if we could play schools that rivaled us both in athletics and academics. As we just faced off with Vanderbilt University, a school many of my friends attend, I feel a renewed sense of competition. And it is this competitive fire that leads me to believe, strongly, we need to reinvigorate varsity sports at Rice by creating a conference of similar universities.
According to Wikipedia, Vanderbilt Chancellor Harvie Branscomb tried to start a rivalry with the Ivy League by challenging Yale University to a football match in 1948. After getting pummeled 35-0, Yale chose to never play Vanderbilt again. Branscomb then met with the presidents of other private Southern universities - Rice, Duke University, Tulane University and Southern Methodist University - to "try to establish a new sports conference where small, academically-inclined universities could compete." As a direct challenge to Ivy sports and culture, this conference would be called the Magnolia League.
The idea for such a league gained popularity in the 1960s, mainly due to the disadvantages that small, elite, Southern universities faced in the sporting world. The University of Texas was (and still is) beating up on Rice, and Southeastern Conference squads regularly hand Tulane a thrashing. There was a major disparity between the large Southern state schools who poured enormous amounts of money into their athletic programs - perhaps at a detriment to their academic programs - and the small universities less willing to sacrifice academics for athletics. The vision of the Magnolia League at the time was to maintain Division I budgets and schedules but not to sell out like the surrounding state schools.
Unfortunately, the Magnolia League never developed into anything more than an idea. SMU and Rice were not willing to give up the Cotton Bowl income, and Duke was already heavily entrenched in its rivalry with the University of North Carolina.
Whether or not Wikipedia's Magnolia League history is entirely accurate - Wikipedia is missing a few key sources - it's time to bring back the Magnolia League in both sports and culture.
Rice of the 21st century struggles to get students excited for matches against schools in Conference USA (a conference people often forget exists), and Vanderbilt is consistently embarrassed by other SEC powerhouses. By coming together like the Ivies originally did, we could introduce a whole new level of competition while maintaining our academic integrity.
The Magnolia League would include a select number of small Southern private universities: Rice, Duke, Emory University, Vanderbilt, SMU, Tulane, Davidson College and Wake Forest University. The top teams of the Magnolia League could play the top teams of the Ivy League in the Civil War Bowl held in Gettysburg, Penn.
Granted, it would take a while for the programs to even out in competitiveness (Duke football, anyone?) but once athletic funding and recruitment standards are established across these schools, we could finally be part of a conference we care about competing in.
In addition to making sports infinitely more interesting at Rice, all schools associated with the Magnolia League would gain a certain level of prestige. We would no longer be labeled "Southern Ivies," which to me sounds like Harvard with a shotgun and overalls. We would be as revered as our northern rivals and could voice what a private undergraduate education in the South really means. While our friends up north lie buried under three feet of snow in November, we're playing beer golf on Friday afternoons. We too are ambitious and hard-working students; we just have far more ways to enjoy ourselves when it's 60-90 degrees during the school year.
The Magnolia League is not just a conference; it's a state of mind that small private universities in the South share. It's a relaxed lifestyle that makes a private southern undergraduate education so enjoyable. If we make our academic rivals into athletic rivals as well, we can gain recognition together and elevate the prestige of small Southern universities to another degree.
We can transform from being known as the schools that are too nerdy to compete in the SEC or Big 12 to the elite Southern universities who choose to maintain our academic cultures by not underselling academics like big conference schools. By bringing the elite academic schools of the South into one sports conference, we will both reinvigorate our spirit for varsity athletics and create a unified Southern alternative to the Ivy League.
Alex Bonnel is a Wiess College senior.
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