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@MisterCake:Your edit asserts Clemson football is a member of the SIAA conference in 1897. My citation of Clemson's 2016 Media Guide, pg 200 shows 1897 Clemson football was not part of SIAA or any other conference -contrast the 1897 visual treatment with 1900, 1901, 1938, 1953, and later years where the conference name and conference W-L-T record are explicity broken out.
That's what's between the ref tags. A media guide not knowing the conference 120 years ago when they don't have the championship banner is superior to a contemporary yearbook of a conference member listing members of the conference before it talks about its football team because....? Cake (talk) 10:10, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I have done some research on the SIAA, but mainly through a couple of programs. You have to remember that the SIAA in its infancy was a small, evolving, spreading league, with evolving rules & eligibility, organizing by spreading school membership who had delegates, who in turn, were just starting to organize their first teams to participate in any form of athletics outside their own campuses. All of the schools / teams were not even called programs yet, were not wealthy, mostly poor, and travel to further states wasn't always easy. With that said, I contacted the Clemson University sports information office and library. According to their records, a book entitled: "Handbook of Southern Intercollegiate Track and Field Athletics" [1] by John Wendell Bailey (1924) of former Mississippi A&M College has Clemson College, among other schools, listed as members as of 1895. Clemson didn't officially field their first athletic team until the following spring in 1896, which was baseball. It followed with football in September of that same year, under Walter Riggs from Auburn, who later oversaw the Carolina delegates of the SIAA (settling disputes over issues like rules and eligibility, eg. like if a baseball player played pro or minor league baseball for a summer) until he became an acting president in 1912-15 after William Dudley stepped down. Clemson also stayed members of the SIAA league until 1921 when they helped charter the early Southern Conference. Hence, whomever removed Clemson College (who has always been affiliated in some way with a league since it started fielding teams) from the SIAA and Southern Conference standings for those years (mostly in the early 20th Century), needs to restore them as it probably already was. Best. SportsEdits1 (talk) 00:55, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the media guide that was referenced, since the SIAA was so large, and didn't have clear guidelines for picking champions, it appears the media guide writers only banner-ed SIAA years when they were either champions or co-champions. Probably similar with the early Southern Conference years, or until they were high enough in the standings to be in consideration for a championship designation. Perhaps by 1938 the Southern Conference had more set guidelines for ranking their members each season. I didn't think to ask about that. 1953 I do believe was the first year of the Atlantic Coast Conference (?) which was more organized that it's predecessors. SportsEdits1 (talk) 01:18, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
A (very) few sources: Like previous editors have discovered, I wanted to add that one finding sources for SIAA will be scarce (I would relax on strict policy pushing in this case), unless you try pulling more sparse newspaper clippings. The Clemson Cooper Library archivist and the assistant sports information director I spoke with both did site these booklet publications the university had in their archives that were put out by the SIAA every so often called the "Constitution of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association" (rule book) printed by Spalding Press, New York. There are three listed here on this page: [2]. SportsEdits1 (talk)
