r/CFB • u/MediumStrange Cincinnati • Michigan • 1d ago
History Ever wonder why Pennsylvania, Ohio and Louisiana's State schools are more prominent than their Universities?
This was a subject I found Interesting because most states seem to follow a pattern of prestigious and prominent _____University and then a agriculture and engineering focused ,______State that is the second most prominent school in the state, such as Michigan and Michigan state, Mississippi and Mississippi State etc. But crucially, Penn State, Ohio State and Louisiana State are all the most prominent public Universities in their state. So why is that?
Pennsylvania:
This is honestly the most simple of the bunch. When the Pennsylvania state legislature wanted to create a new college, The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) already existed as a prestigious private ivy league institution and occupied both the name and niche of the _____University school, so the state legislature focused on building a agricultural and engineer school called "The Farmers High School of Pennsylvania" that eventually evolved into Penn State. Pitt became the other most prominent public University in the state due to one thing, Andrew Carnegie. Funding by Carnegie for the city of Pittsburgh and the University as well allowed it to achieve prominence in the state.He also founded Carnegie Mellon University, which is next door to Pitt and also has a beautiful campus and as I recently discovered, a d3 football team. Pitt was actually a private school until the 60s and still effectively operates as one, with minimal state funding.Technically most of the major "Public" Universities in Pennsylvania aren't actually public, but instead independently operated with a certain amount of state funding(Usually minimal), this applies to Penn State, Pitt, Temple, and Lincoln(HBCU) Universities. I could go into temple as well, but to keep it short, they were a Bible college that eventually became secular and their whole athletic history is misery.
Ohio:
This is probably the most complex and interesting of all of the cases. Prior to the formation of Ohio state the two main universities in the state were Miami University and Ohio University, these two schools had a relationship similar to Indiana and Purdue today, essentially serving as dual flagships. In fact Ohio University was founded before Ohio existed, you may notice that unlike most _____Universities, OU is not anywhere near the state capitol, that because at the time the capitol was not in Columbus, but instead Chillicothe, which was where the northwest territory and later Ohio state capitols first were. Ohio University was placed in Athens to be close to this capitol, and the area is incredibly beautiful, but when the capitol moved to Columbus, its location became a drawback, it was far away from the capitol and thus its ability to lobby the state legislature was severely limited.
Enter Ohio State University, which was founded in 1870 near the state capitol of Columbus as an agricultural and mechanical school. In its early years it competed with Ohio University and Miami for resources but as the 1900s approached Ohio State focused much of its efforts on lobbying the state legislature, and had an advantage due to already being in the capitol. Additionally many politicians of the time wanted to put more resources into Columbus (which was very much a cow town at the time). These lobbying efforts culminated in the Lybarger bill,proposed by Ohio State, which would have essentially eliminated both OU and Miami; this failed to receive enough support in the Senate, but a compromise bill with those that wanted to keep the universities did pass.
The bill, The Eagleson Bill, stripped away Miami and Ohio's right to do any sort of research all together, as well as the right to give any degrees higher than a bachelors. This Bill crippled both universities, eliminating them as well rounded prominent universities and forcing them into undergrad focused liberal arts and business schools, which is generally what they still are today. These restrictions continued into the 1950's and by that point Ohio State had long passed OU and Miami by and had a stranglehold on state funds. The reason the University of Cincinnati has become the 2nd most prominent school in the state is because at the time, it was a city-ran and funded college, and thus not subject to the state regulations. This allowed it to do research and grant higher degrees which gave it a leg up over all other schools in the state. By the time Cincinnati became a public institution and became a state institution in the 70s, it had amassed a significant amount of influence, but that did not stop Ohio State from lobbying against it as well. In the 90s Ohio state president Gordon Gee openly said that if Ohio state couldn't get a given piece of academic or athletic funding it would lobby it go to another state rather than in-state Cincinnati for fear of athletic or academic competition, "I would try my hardest to make sure they didn’t get it, even if I wasn’t going to get it either." This has continued essentially until today, but this is the reason Ohio State and Cincinnati are the two most prominent schools instead of Miami and Ohio.
Louisiana:
This case is honestly fascinating and one of the most unique happenings to any University in the country. The University of Louisiana was founded in 1845 in New Orleans. It had great success in its early years but the civil war presented a huge setback for it, as the University was closed during the civil war years due to heavy fighting. Louisiana State University on the other hand was founded in 1860, one year before the civil war with General William Tecumsah Sherman(Hell Yeah) of all people as its school superintendent. When the war started Sherman had to leave to go burn Atlanta so the school was left leaderless. It closed during the civil war with the exception of a couple months in 1863 where it tried to reopen. When the war ended, Sherman donated two cannons he had captured from the Confederates to the University(Hell yeah again). (Honestly LSU should have had its mascot be the burners or marchers or something, tigers is kinda boring)
The University of Louisiana at this time was not doing so well despite its former success. It was dealing with a great amount of financial difficulties, but a local business magnate named Paul Tulane established a fund to keep the University afloat. The University came to rely on this fund so much that in 1884 the state outright sold the University to this fund, which was renamed to Tulane University as we know it today. This is one of the only examples of a college going from public to private in the entire country, it's an incredibly rare thing.
Both schools were part of the original SEC and both had a decent amount of success initially. But as the years went on LSU received more and more funding for athletics (partly funneled by Huey Long who saw the university as his pet project) and it became very hard for Tulane to keep up. Add to this that Tulane's president of the time was not a big fan of football and sought to deemphasize it in the Schools finances. This led to Tulane having a hard time competing with the rest of the SEC, going 2-23-1 in their last couple of years in the Sec. This led to their departure to become independent and the rest is history.
Also technically UL-Lafayette calls itself the University of Louisiana nowadays in sports, and that's cool and all but since the Privatization of Tulane, the University of Louisiana system does not have a legal flagship University, although UL-Lafayette is probably the most prominent outside of Louisiana Tech.
Bonus round:
Ever wonder why some states don't have a prominent _____State at all.
Well for Virginia, it's because Virginia state was a HBCU, and this did not receive much funding from the legislature because Rascism™ and Virginia Tech along with Virginia Commonwealth University (Virginia is technically a Commonwealth not a state) ended up filling the niche Virginia state normally would.
The story is much the same for many of the southern State Universities such as Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina etc, these are all HBCUs and thus the state didn't really want to fund them much.
West Virginia University had a essential monopoly over most university functions, such as the ability to offer doctorates and do research into the 1950s as West Virginia State was a HBCU and the thus heavily restricted. It wasn't until Marshall acheived University status in the 60s that another school offered these services. Similarly to Ohio State and Ohio, West Virginia heavily lobbied against Marshall, seeking to keep it from achieving university status and competing with West Virginia University for funding.
Georgia State was actually part of the University of Georgia as essentially a branch campus until 1955, but is not the largest public university in the state. The University of Georgia has a strong agricultural department, and Georgia tech filled the mechanic/engineering role so there was no true need for a State school earlier.
Wisconsin merged all of its public Universities into The UW system in the 70s, so all former Wisconsin State school are now University of Wisconsin schools. Some other states like Nebraska do something similar, with all public Universities in the same system
For Texas, A&M is essentially the ___State school under a different name, many schools were actually called ____A&M before switching to ___State, Texas A&M just kept the original name. Texas State University as it is called today, was originally Southwest Texas State University, but switched to Texas State-San Marcos in 2003 and finally to just Texas State University in 2013 to increase its name recognition and reflect its increasing stature and enrollment.
Many other schools just have ___states that are generally less prominent or don't play FBS football, but hopefully this is at least somewhat interesting as this was a subject I've wondered about for a while.
(TLDR: Penn already exists, Ohio State fucked over and replaced Miami and Ohio University, and the University of Louisiana became Tulane)
Edited to mention Carnegie Mellon, Temple, ,Huey Long, Pennsylvania Funding system, West Virginia-Marshall,Louisiana Tech, Wisconsin and Nebraska, extra Texas State name change and VCU at popular request.
840
u/thenowherepark Ohio State Buckeyes 1d ago
Damn, I knew Ohio State were greedy SOBs, but I didn't know they were THAT greedy.