The Magnolia Conference

There has been recent conjecture that someday that mega-conferences of 16 to 18 members will become the new norm with the SEC, Big Ten, Pac 12, and probably the best elements of the Big 12 and ACC emerging as the only major conferences.  This would likely mean that a number of smaller, private, academically minded universities could be left homeless.  With this said I think NCAA conference realignment bloggers and enthusiasts should consider the creation of a Magnolia League.

The Magnolia League is not a new idea, in fact its a very old one.  Several decades ago a group of schools put forth the idea that the South's prestigious private schools should band together to create an athletic conference with high academic standards paralleling the well known northeastern academic juggernaut the Ivy League.

Who would be part of the Magnolia League?

It really depends on who is left standing after all the dominoes fall. You could potentially have a membership that looks something like this:

Wake Forest (from ACC)
Duke (from ACC)
Tulane (from Big East)
Southern Methodist (from Big East)
Rice (from C-USA)
Tulsa (from C-USA)
Baylor (from Big 12)
Texas Christian (from Big 12)

Should Vanderbilt ever decide to leave the SEC (which is highly doubtful) they too would be a prime candidate for membership.

Another private school, albeit a non-southern school that could be left out of the realignment shuffle that might have interest in such a league would be Boston College.

Any state school left out of the power conferences who was a member of the Association of American Universities, a consortium of the nation's top research universities, would also be welcome to join.  This might include someone like Georgia Tech.

I think the Magnolia League could be a tremendous success.  It would stand as a bold defiance to the mindset that college conference membership should be driven by greed, television markets, and Darwinian/Machiavellian sabotage of rival conferences.  It would be a conference built upon shared values and beliefs about the role of college athletics.