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[QUOTE="WoadBlue, post: 5319819, member: 1145"]
Tell that to UVA and UNC and Indiana and Cal-Berkeley and Oregon and Washington, to name a few. Being the state's Flagship means the state's Elite Liberal Arts university, which historically means, among other things, pointing toward the state's top law school and related graduate school programs, which are at that Flagship. The Land Grant is about Agriculture and all related sciences, including Engineering. Each type state U commands a huge following in all things, including sports, in states that early on had governments that took such schools seriously.

And schools knew that, with many acting to double their power. UGA, for example, was the state's old Flagship and fought very successfully to have the Land Grant added to it, which means what we see today: no matter how truly Elite GT is, UGA commands about 4 or 5 times more support from average GA citizens than GT.

U Tennessee did the same thing, but the reasons were about state politics and the Civil War. The Republican center of TN was around Knoxville, while the Nashville and Memphis areas quickly became strong Democrat as soon as that was allowed. If Tennesseee had created a Land Grant Tenn A&M, it almost certainly would have been in a small town near Nashville, the capital (Murfreesboro and Franklin most likely but towns like Gallatin and Lebanon also possible). As TN Republicans felt that such a school located in a Democrat area would hurt them in state politics, they fought tooth and nail, and even crookedly, to make certain all Land Grant money went to Knoxville.
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