EC Becomes Tenth Member
This article describes the history of the Southern Conference. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.
Citation for this article is: "EC Becomes Tenth Member," East Carolinian, May 8, 1964.
The Southern Conference has had a long and interesting past. At one time, the conference had 23 members and before last Friday it had nine, the smallest membership in its history.
In February 1921, fifteen colleges and universities met in Atlanta, Georgia to form the Southern Intercollegiate Conference. Six months later,fourteen of the colleges became charter members. They were Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi State, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington and Lee.
In 1922, Florida, LSU, Mississippi, South Carolina, Vanderbilt, and the original fifteen colleges, Tulane brought the membership to twenty. In 1923, the University of the South joined, and the name of the conference was changed to the Southern Conference. Later in 1924, VMI entered, and even later in 1929, Duke joined. However, in 1932, the conference was found to be too large to operate efficiently and thus the thirteen southern-most schools withdrew. Many of them are now members of the Southeastern Conference.
This left Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, NC State, South Carolina, Virginia, VMI, Virginia Tech, and Washington and Lee in the Conference.
Again in 1936, the membership rose when six more colleges joined. New members were composed of the Citadel, William and Mary, Davidson, Furman, Richmond, and Wake Forest. These schools brought the membership up to sixteen. In 1937, the University of Virginia dropped out. The decline did not last long, however, for in 1941, George Washington University entered and in 1950, the University of West Virginia joined.
In 1953, seven members withdrew to form the Atlantic Coast Conference. The conference then stood with ten members. They were: The Citadel, William and Mary, Davidson, Furman, George Washington, Richmond, VMI, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, and Washington and Lee. In 1958 Washington and Lee left, thus leaving it composed of the nine that existed last week. On May 1, 1964, the conference gained a tenth member, bringing the membership back to the amount they had in 1958. This tenth member was East Carolina.
