[1] The idea soon grew into a plan to hold a yearly football championship around Thanksgiving determined by games played between the champions of five southern states.

Charles Baskerville (North Carolina), Dr. George Petrie (Virginia), and Frank Spain (Georgia Tech) were the prominent promoters of the plan.

[4] The league was split into two "circuits", with the "Northern" one comprising Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, and the "Southern" one comprising Tennessee and Alabama; the champion of each circuit would play each other for the championship of the SIAA each year, with yearly championship matches scheduled for Thanksgiving for football and May 13 for baseball.

[5] The league also took on the usual matters of interest in terms of purifying and organizing athletics at the time, including banning former professional players.

On May 11, 1893, after a full season of SIAA baseball play, an arbitration committee set out to determine whether Vanderbilt, Alabama, or Sewanee had topped the Southern Division, as the teams had a split record with no clear winner.

[9] Despite this, there was some discontent within the organization; Secretary Wilders, of Sewanee, opined at length about the decision, describing his distaste about the "secret" nature of the arbitrators.

[10] William Dudley, representative of Vanderbilt, fired back a long retort of his own, accusing Wilders of not understanding the rules of the SIAA's constitution.

Though the hopes were high that Virginia, North Carolina, and Johns Hopkins would form a new association in September, this appears to have never come to fruition.

[17] The original members were Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Johns Hopkins, North Carolina, Sewanee, Vanderbilt, and Virginia.

[24] They crafted a constitution, created an executive committee, elected officers, and set rules for:[24] The league did not, however, sponsor much in the way of championship competition for its member schools.

[25] At the conference's annual meeting on December 10, 1920, the SIAA rejected proposals to ban freshman athletes and abolish paid summer baseball.

[26] On February 25, 1921, Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Mississippi State, and Tennessee left the SIAA to form the Southern Conference, along with non-SIAA members Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Washington and Lee.

[27] In 1922, the Southern Conference underwent an expansion and added six more members, all at the expense of the SIAA: Florida, Louisiana State, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tulane, and Vanderbilt.