Like Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, its football team wears purple and gold, has a winning record against Auburn University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Mississippi, and was a charter member of the Southeastern Conference.
But that is about where the similarities end between the University of the South, also known as Sewanee, and every other SEC institution.
Located on a mountaintop between Nashville and Chattanooga, Tenn., this elite private college of about 1,400 students withdrew from the league in 1940. Concerned about an overemphasis on athletics, Sewanee’s leaders chose a different path.
Since then not much has changed on this secluded, leafy campus, including the restrained focus on sports. Some of the university’s Gothic buildings were built more than a century ago. All classes are taught by professors. And students are more likely to wear an academic gown to class (they earn them for making high grades) than to show up in their team colors.
Athletics certainly has a place here. The university sponsors 24 sports, more than most Southeastern Conference programs offer. But unlike in the SEC, where some athletics budgets exceed $100-million, Sewanee sports makes do on $3.9-million a year. (That’s what the University of Alabama pays coach Nick Saban alone.)
More than any sport, football is what separates the Sewanee Tigers from those at Auburn and LSU. Sewanee’s football team plays in a stadium—if you can call it that—that liberally seats 2,000. A few hours up the road, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville averages more than 100,000 fans a game.
Mark Webb, Sewanee’s director of athletics, says the SEC’s money would be great, but not for his Division III program. “We’re not in the entertainment business,” he says. “We’re about having programs that enhance the student experience.”
Athletes in many big-time programs practice year-round, but sports here are mostly limited to the playing season. And by and large, athletes are students first: The average SAT score is over 1200, some athletes study abroad, and more than a handful major in the sciences.
“If a coach told a student-athlete they couldn’t take a science class because of a practice, I would hear from the professor,” Mr. Webb says. “We work around the classes.”
A few years ago, Mr. Webb was on an NCAA committee with David E. Housel, who was the athletic director at Auburn University at the time.
“Do you know you have a winning record against us?” Mr. Housel mentioned one day, referring to Sewanee’s three-game edge over Auburn’s vaunted football program. “Our fans don’t like having a losing record against teams.”
According to Mr. Webb, Auburn’s athletic director offered Sewanee $600,000 a year for four years to “come be our Homecoming fodder.”
Sewanee’s AD didn’t have to think long. “Not against your trainers and managers am I going to do that,” he said.
“At one time we were in the big leagues,” Mr. Webb says now. “But over the last few decades, we’ve kind of found our place.”
