Quote from: MCScots2013 on October 20, 2026, 03:32:31 PMI think one of the points earlier this summer from awadelewis was Rhodes and Sewanee sticking together.  Fair point, I guess.  And--as someone who loves the traditions and rivalries of college athletics--very much appreciated.  The last 10+ years of conference realignments in any division has me throwing in the towel somedays.

But, you are right.  Centre has options.  Just north enough and south enough to get attention and would be a good addition to any conference.

It would make me very sad to see Sewanee and Rhodes in different conferences as it would flush a rivalry that's over a century old.  That's one of issues I have with the idea of going the CCS route as there really isn't any traditional rivalries for us in that list for football.   Unlike some of the others such as between Berry, LaGrange, and Huntingdon.  But necessity exists, I think. 

Today's results puts Millsaps in the top spot in the conference standings with Maryville second.   

Trinity and Berry tied at 3-4.

Here's how the schedule plays out for the rest of season:
Millsaps: Trinity, @Southwestern, Berry, @Maryville
Maryville: Berry, Off week, Southwestern, Millsaps
Trinity: @Millsaps,  Sewanee, @Centre, @Rhodes
Berry: @Maryville, Centre, @Millsaps, Sewanee

Millsaps put the hurt on Sewanee today but they seem to have a favorable schedule with both Trinity and Berry having to go to Jackson.  Berry can get back into the mix if they can get out of Maryville with a win. Let's see what Trinity can pull together after today's performance.

Quote from: Ron Boerger on October 16, 2026, 06:48:42 AM

Quote from: MCScots2013 on October 15, 2026, 02:20:43 PMYou also made me curious.  Is there a story behind the use of Alumni Weekend rather than Homecoming?

Utterly no clue.  There are about 40 events that take place during a 2.5 day period that starts today but I don't suppose that's all that unusual for colleges these days.  There's nothing I could find online that explains why.

Our alumni office at Sewanee tried going the "Alumni Weekend" route a few years ago to justify segregating alumni-focused activities and student-focused activities around Homecoming.  Mixing alumni, students, and alcohol was causing problems in the insular social environment on the Mountain.   We are back to calling it Homecoming but the alumni office has events scheduled almost to the minute with clear separation of alumni vs. student events.  I live near Sewanee so rarely do the formal stuff but this year is my 40th so shall be interesting to go through it all.

Quote from: D3Navy on October 13, 2026, 07:31:12 PMMillsaps has a vibe.  Pulling for Millsaps.

With both Trinity and Berry at home.   They're in a serious position to play spoiler through the rest of the season.

Quote from: MCScots2013 on October 10, 2026, 02:40:25 PM51-13 Maryville. All time series is now 18-17 in favor of the good guys.

No surprises on that one. Our season is running to my expectation.   And Trinity is up 35-7 on Southwestern with just under 5 minutes left in that game.

Quote from: MCScots2013 on October 09, 2026, 10:29:32 AM...
Looks like Sewanee has lights, but all games on the schedule are afternoon games.  All three schools are within 3 hours from Maryville. 
...

Our putting lights on Harris-McGee Field was driven more by Field Hockey and Lacrosse as they use the field outside of Football season.    It's been rare for us to do a night game in Football.  I can only think of one game since we put in the lights four years ago.  Been a couple of games where they were turned on to try punch through the classic Sewanee Fog that we get on The Mountain every now and then.

Looks like we may get tropical weather coming in late Friday through the day on Saturday.   May see some impact on games in Jackson and Memphis.

Quote from: Ron Boerger on October 03, 2026, 05:36:37 PMDon't kid yourself, the UL system won't let their schools go D2 or D3.  Maybe some of the FBS schools might go FCS.

Speaking as a graduate alumnus of ULL, not something the fan base is going to let happen. There is already a petition being sent around calling for the recall of both the UL System President and the LSU Law alumnus whose comments in the UL System Board meeting got these news stories started.  This sort of thing is one of the few that causes our fan base and the LaTech fan base to put aside our disdain for each other to band together against LSU.

Sewanee gets into the win column with a rain-delayed victory over NC Wesleyan, 24-17.

Weather delay on The Mountain with the last report being Sewanee up 17-10 on NC Wesleyan with 3:48 left in the 2nd when play was suspended.   On-line stats say play was to resume at 3:15pm CDT but hasn't updated with it being 4pm.

LaGrange beat Centre 16-14.

Quote from: jknezek on September 18, 2026, 10:16:38 AMNo, Sewanee is welcome to the title. W&L is struggling with their history and their alums enough these days, and it has cost the school plenty. I have no love for the Lost Cause, but University Chapel is a lesser place without all the historical plaques and an open view of the Recumbent Lee statue. History is best in context, and Lee Chapel should have had the context added instead of the history removed to the museum.

They can rename every building on campus, they should even rename the school in my opinion, but Lee Chapel was the proper place for history and I don't like what happened to it.

That's fair. We've had our share of struggles with our history over the past two decades as well. My take of our experiences at Sewanee has been that our administrations over that time have been so fixated on distancing ourselves from the negative aspects of our history that we've tossed so much of the good because some thought it too tainted with the bad.  A lot of things that tied Sewanee to the Oxbridge tradition have been deemphasized over the years and that has made the place a lot less unique.   

Sewanee was founded in the late 1850s by the Bishops of the Southern Dioceses of the Episcopal Church.   These were all men raised in the patrician planter culture of the Antebellum South. The leader of that group, Bp. Leonidas Polk of Lousisana, was a scion of the one the major planter families in central TN that included Pres. James Polk, was the roommate to Jefferson Davis at West Point,  and was, based on his record during the Civil War, a far better clergyman than he was a general.  Best known for being decapitated by a cannon ball at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.   The reasoning behind wanting to found a "New and Grand University of the South" sounds familiar today as people were concerned about the "liberal ideas" that children of the planter families were getting from those dens of iniquity like Harvard and Yale.

There was a big event in 1859 for the laying of the cornerstone on the Mountain that brought clergy and layman from all of the south to the wilds of the Cumberland Plateau.   Unfortunately, the cornerstone celebrated that day was blasted to smithereens by a group of Illinois infantrymen a few years later as the Union's Army of the Tennessee passed over the Mountain on their way from the Tullahoma campaign to the Chattanooga campaign.

A large amount of the money backing the startup of The University of the South came from plantation money.  For example, one of the larger donors was John Armfield who was a partner in the largest slave trading concern in the Antebellum South. But the war flushed all that money away. The land was a donation from the Sewanee Coal and Iron Company which eventually became Tennessee Consolidated Coal and Iron that was a  founding component of US Steel.

After the war,  the Bishop of Tennessee, Charles Quintard, led an effort to restart the institution to ensure that we kept the land grant.  We offered Gen. Lee the position of Vice Chancellor and President but he turned us down as wanted to remain in Virginia.

But many of what I call the "middle managers" of the Confederate Army settled in Sewanee after the war.   The place became one of the centers of the Lost Cause movement.  A large portion of the campus that is consistently being nominated as the most beautiful campus in the country dates from that era. And like the South, we had our ups and downs through the years.

So... in spite of the protests of my fraternity brothers, friends, and acquaintances from Washington and Lee,  I can seriously make the claim of Sewanee being the "First University of the Confederacy".   That can be viewed as either a good or bad thing.

Berry just barely edges out LaGrange, 20-17.   That one looked like it was a back & forth thing the entire game.

Got a good one going at Maryville as Hanover just scored at the end of the 3Q to retake the lead 29-26.

Austin is up 17-7 on Rhodes at the half.

And Brevard is up 36-8 late in the 3q on Sewanee.   That one is unfortunately going as expected.

All other games are evening games.

Quote from: Ron Boerger on September 06, 2026, 09:17:09 AMOther than Berry (50-20 winners at Huntingdon, so much for that graduation loss) and (finally) Trinity, the news yesterday in the SAA was not so good, which doesn't bear well for the conference's hopes for a second bid should that trend continue:

• Despite a heroic second-half effort, Sewanee fell 37-40.
• As noted earlier, Maryville fell after closing to within a TD of Heidelberg, 14-40.
• Southwestern lost to likely mid-pack ASC McMurry, 26-36.
• Centre was shut out 0-17 by a good Hanover squad with QB Zane Cartwright struggling through a 13-38-89 yard performance (1 int).
• By halftime, Rhodes trailed WashU at home 49-0 and ended up losing 73-0.

With the NESCAC and SCAC taking two of last year's at-large bids, they will be much harder to come by this year and starting non-conference play 2-5 is not good. 

Not good, but nothing unexpected for me in week 1.  And makes next Saturday even more interesting with Hanover coming to Maryville and McMurry going to Trinity.  I expect Trinity will have the rough edges worked out before next week but it will be interesting to see how well Maryville does against Hanover after this week's performance.