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The Southeastern Conference

By Matt Shetler

 

The SEC was founded in 1932 when the thirteen members of the Southern Conference left to form their own conference.  The SEC consists of twelve members that compete in seventeen Division I sports.  The SEC headquarters is located in Birmingham, Alabama and the commissioner of the conference is Michael Slive, a post he has held since 2002.
   
Ten of the charter members have remained in the conference: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.  The other three charter members were:  Sewanee (left in 1940 and no longer emphasizes athletics), Georgia Tech (left in 1964) and Tulane (left in 1966).  The SEC added the University of Arkansas and University of South Carolina in 1991, expanding from ten to the current twelve members.
   
The SEC is recognized as the most successful conference in the nation, both on the field and financially.  Since 1990, the SEC has averaged six national titles a year and leads all conferences in revenue distributed to its members.
   
The SEC was a founding member of the BCS and has ties to nine bowl games: the Sugar Bowl, Capital One Bowl, Outback Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Chick-fil-A Bowl, Liberty Bowl, Music City Bowl, Independence Bowl and starting in 2008, the Papajohns.com Bowl.  The conference splits its teams into two divisions, East and West.  The winners of each meet in the SEC title game, held in Atlanta, Georgia.  The SEC was the first conference to play a title game, getting permission from the NCAA to do so in 1992.
   
SEC football produces some of the great rivalries in existence:  Alabama-Auburn (The Iron Bowl), Auburn-Georgia (The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry), Georgia-Florida (The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party), Florida-Tennessee (the Third Saturday in October), and Tennessee-Kentucky (The Border Bowl) are among these.  A new rivalry dubbed The Saben Bowl got started in 2007 between LSU and Alabama.  The Crimson Tides head coach Nick Saben was the former coach of the Tigers, jumpstarting this rivalry.
   
The SEC has excelled in other sports than football.  Tennessee’s Lady Vols is perhaps the best women’s basketball program of all time and the Kentucky Wildcats have won more games than any other program in NCAA men’s basketball history (as of 2008).
   
Since its inception in 1932, the SEC has won a total of 161 team national championships.
    

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