Hypothetical: Would Sewanee Have Worked Out In The SEC Long Term?

Doubtful; the money didn't start rolling in until a couple decades ago. Just fortunate timing, Saban arriving at LSU to push an arms race in conference between LSU, Auburn, UGA and Fla, with Tennessee hanging around on the periphery and Alabama's history tossed in. That prompted ESPN to dump a buttload of cash here, and that's when the conference as a whole separated.

Until then, the brand was probably 4th at best. You had the Big 8/Big 12 with Nebraska and Oklahoma, you had the Big 10 with Michigan and Ohio State, you had the U (and Big East), and Fla State (ACC).

That's going a LONG time as probably the team Vandy pushes around, before any windfall happened.

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We regret exceedingly to take this step

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Not exactly an opening line from the Churchill textbook.

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Doubtful; the money didn't start rolling in until a couple decades ago.

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Sewanee was pretty much doomed. They were just a bit too small to pull this off.

The schools that have to be kicking themselves are Georgia Tech and Tulane. Both were large enough that they could have stayed in the conference and competed if they had invested during the lean years. Both in rich recruiting areas.

What doomed both of them, I think, was this idea of creating a "Southern Ivy" conference to rival the Ivy League. Unfortunately for them, while there are enough Southern colleges to put such a conference together... most of them didn't want anything to do with spending the money to compete at the highest level in sports. And, it should be noted, the Ivy League itself, despite its vast endowments, shied away from competing in the FBS and doesn't send teams to the FCS tourney in football.

I drove through that campus a couple of years ago. Talk about an isolated area.
They were relevant when only rich kids even knew what a college was let alone attend one.
As education was expanded for the masses, U of South was never going to compete with powers in the old SEC.

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The schools that have to be kicking themselves are Georgia Tech and Tulane. Both were large enough that they could have stayed in the conference and competed if they had invested during the lean years. Both in rich recruiting areas.

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this is the correct answer

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Hypothetical: Would Sewanee Have Worked Out In The SEC Long Term?

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Ever been to Sewanee? Just for starters, where would you put a stadium? Parking for tens of thousands of football fans?

Saw a legitimate mountain lion on the highway up there.
Majestic.

No

Have you ever been there?

While Duke, Vanderbilt, and Sewanee all were religious schools, Sewanee never got the Sugar Daddy (tobacco for Duke and railroads for Vanderbilt) needed to make the next step. Like many small Southern private schools, WWI + WWII meant the GI Bill and the rise of the state schools.

Great campus but in the middle of nowhere
Small private school with no game changing donor

Centre College (first non Ivy school to beat Harvard) & (School that played TAMU in the game that created 12th Man) had a similar fate.

Transylvania University (1st school in the South to play football) was split to form the nexus of UK but remained small and private. In the early days of the country they had a better med school than Harvard.

Tulane was a football power early on but chose academics over athletics and gave their Rose Bowl bid in the 1920's to Alabama.

Never.
Have you been there? Middle of nowhere.

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Have you been there? Middle of nowhere.

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Plenty/most SEC schools were located in what was considered "the middle of nowhere" at the dawning of Southern College Football stretching through much of the 20th century. Like imagine what a desolate, baren land of nothingness that College Station, Starkville, Auburn, ect. were pre 1940. If they were still an SEC school with at least 10/15k students, then that entire town and the resulting supporting local economy that would have naturally sprouted along side the growth of a theoretical modern day SEC Sewanee would have made Monteagle/Franklin County TN unrecognizable.

I betcha from like 1920-1970ish they could have eventually had just one excellent coach fall into their laps (in either football or basketball) who could have turned that entire institution's perception and priorities around as it pertained to how they perceived the role of athletics within Universities. An SEC alumni & donor base/fanbase they could have amassed over this past century as college athletics became ever increasingly culturally relevant/visible to go along with the Old Money coffers they have always had easily could have transformed "The University of the South" into a trust Fund, academia elitist, epically wild SEC party school with a "Southern" flare.

You just can't convince me a place called the "University of the South" wouldn't have worked out long term in the SEC. Just feels like they would have found their "niche" amongst the SEC had they stuck it out.

JMO. Fun to think about if you are an SEC/ college football nerd like all of us are.