Southeastern Conference

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Southeastern Conference
Southeastern Conference
Data
Classification NCAA Division I FBS
Established 1932
Members 12
Sports fielded 17 (8 men's, 9 women's)
Region Southeastern United States
States 9 - Alabama, Arkansas, Florida,
Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee
Headquarters Birmingham, Alabama
Locations

The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is a college athletic conference headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama which operates in the southeastern part of the United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I in athletic competitions; for football, it is part of the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division I-A). The conference is one of the most successful both on the field and financially, averaging more than six national championships per year since 1990 and consistently leading all conferences in revenue distribution to its members including $116.1 million in the 2005-2006 fiscal year [1]. The Southeastern Conference was also the first to hold a championship game (and award a subsequent title) for football and was one of the founding members of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The current commissioner of the Southeastern Conference is Michael Slive.

Contents

[edit] History

The SEC was established in December 1932, when the 13 members of the Southern Conference located west and south of the Appalachian Mountains left to form their own conference. Ten of the thirteen charter members have remained in the conference since its inception: the University of Alabama, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Kentucky, University of Mississippi, University of Tennessee, Auburn University, Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University, and Vanderbilt University. The University of Arkansas and The University of South Carolina later joined in the early 1990s. The other charter members were:

  • Sewanee: Left the SEC in 1940. The school has since deemphasized varsity athletics, and is currently a member of the Division III Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference.
  • Georgia Tech: Left the SEC in 1964. In 1975, it became a founding member of the Metro Conference, one of the predecessors to today's Conference USA. Georgia Tech competed in the Metro in all sports except football, in which it was independent. In 1978, Georgia Tech joined the Atlantic Coast Conference for all sports, where it has remained.
  • Tulane: Left the SEC in 1966. Along with Georgia Tech, it was a charter member of the Metro Conference. Unlike Tech, however, Tulane remained in the Metro until the Metro Conference merged into the new Conference USA in 1995. Tulane remained an independent in football until the formation of Conference USA.

The SEC expanded from 10 to 12 members in 1991 with the addition of the University of Arkansas from the Southwest Conference and the University of South Carolina from the independent ranks in football and the Metro Conference in other sports (except men's soccer, where it stayed with the Metro for two years; after the disbandment of the Metro, it was independent until joining Conference USA for soccer in 2005). In 1992, the SEC adopted the divisional setup that exists today. Also in 1992, the SEC was the first conference to receive permission from the NCAA to conduct an annual championship game in football, featuring the winners of the conference's eastern and western divisions. It was held at Birmingham's Legion Field the first two years and at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta thereafter.

[edit] Current members

The SEC currently has twelve member institutions in nine Southeastern states. The geographic domain of the conference stretches from Arkansas to South Carolina and from Kentucky to Florida. One or both of the flagship universities in each state in the geographic domain of the SEC is a member of the conference, along with one of the preeminent private universities in the nation.

The conference is divided into two geographic divisions: the East Division and the West Division. The twelve current members of the Southeastern Conference are:

East Division
Institution Location
(Population)		 Founded Affiliation Enrollment* Year Joined
University of Florida Gainesville, Florida
(108,856)		 1853 Public 48,000 1932
University of Georgia Athens, Georgia
(100,266)		 1785 Public 32,200 1932
University of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky
(266,358)		 1865 Public 27,209 1932
University of South Carolina Columbia, South Carolina
(116,278)		 1801 Public 27,065 1991
University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee
(173,890)		 1794 Public 26,400 1932
Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee
(561,891)		 1873 Private/Non-sectarian 11,500 1932
West Division
Institution Location
(Population)		 Founded Affiliation Enrollment* Year Joined
University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Alabama
(79,294)		 1831 Public 23,878 1932
University of Arkansas Fayetteville, Arkansas
(67,158)		 1871 Public 17,938 1991
Auburn University Auburn, Alabama
(48,348)		 1856 Public 22,928 1932
Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana
(224,097)		 1860 Public 31,561 1932
University of Mississippi Oxford, Mississippi
(11,756)		 1848 Public 16,500 1932
Mississippi State University Starkville, Mississippi
(21,869)		 1878 Public 15,934 1932
  • Enrollment figures include both undergraduate and graduate students.

[edit] Sports sponsored

Under SEC conference rules reflecting the large number of (male) scholarship participants in football and attempting to address gender equity concerns (see also Title IX), each member institution is required to provide two more women's varsity sports than men's. The equivalent rule was recently adopted by the NCAA for all of Division I.

While South Carolina and Kentucky field men's soccer teams, the conference does not sponsor the sport; both schools in 2005 joined Conference USA for the sport.

[edit] Conference facilities

School Football stadium Capacity Basketball arena Capacity Baseball stadium Capacity
Alabama Bryant-Denny Stadium 92,158 Coleman Coliseum 15,043 Sewell-Thomas Stadium 6,118
Arkansas Razorback Stadium (primary)
War Memorial Stadium (secondary)[1]		 76,000
53,727		 Bud Walton Arena 19,200 Baum Stadium 9,133
Auburn Jordan-Hare Stadium 87,451 Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum 10,500 Plainsman Park 4,096
Florida Ben Hill Griffin Stadium 90,714 Stephen C. O'Connell Center 12,000 McKethan Stadium 5,000
Georgia Sanford Stadium 92,746 Stegeman Coliseum 11,000 Foley Field 3,291
Kentucky Commonwealth Stadium 67,530 Rupp Arena (men and women)
Memorial Coliseum (women only)		 23,000
8,500		 Cliff Hagan Stadium 3,000
LSU Tiger Stadium 92,400 Pete Maravich Assembly Center 14,164 Alex Box Stadium[2] 7,760
Ole Miss Vaught-Hemingway Stadium 60,850 Tad Smith Coliseum 8,700 Swayze Field 3,500
Mississippi State Davis Wade Stadium (Scott Field) 55,082 Humphrey Coliseum 10,500 Dudy Noble Field 15,000
South Carolina Williams-Brice Stadium 80,250 Colonial Center 18,000 Sarge Frye Field[3] 5,000
Tennessee Neyland Stadium 104,079 Thompson-Boling Arena 24,535 Lindsey Nelson Stadium 4,000
Vanderbilt Vanderbilt Stadium 39,790 Memorial Gymnasium 14,168 Hawkins Field 2,027

[edit] College Football Rivalries in the SEC

Football has a rich tradition in the SEC, and its many rivalries among its members have long histories. Some of the rivalries involving SEC teams include:

Rivalry Name Trophy
Alabama-Auburn The Iron Bowl ODK-James E. Foy V Sportsmanship Trophy
Alabama-Tennessee The Third Saturday In October
Arkansas-LSU The Battle for the Golden Boot The Golden Boot[4]
Arkansas-Texas
Auburn-Georgia The Deep South's Oldest Rivalry
Auburn-LSU Auburn LSU rivalry[5] None
Florida-Florida State Battle for the Governor's Cup
Florida-Miami Battle for the Seminole War Canoe The War Canoe Trophy[6]
Florida-Georgia The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party[7]
Florida-Tennessee The Third Saturday In September
Georgia-Georgia Tech Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate The Governor's Cup
Kentucky-Indiana None[8]
Kentucky-Louisville Battle for the Bluegrass The Governor's Cup
LSU-Tulane The Battle for the Rag The Tiger Rag[9]
LSU-Ole Miss A Southern Tradition
Mississippi State-Ole Miss The Egg Bowl The Golden Egg Trophy
South Carolina-Clemson Battle of The Palmetto State
Tennessee-Kentucky The Border Bowl[10]
Tennessee-Vanderbilt
  1. ^ Two games played each year at Little Rock, one non-conference game and one SEC game.
  2. ^ New Alex Box Stadium scheduled to open for 2008 season.
  3. ^ New stadium scheduled to open for 2008 season.
  4. ^ Trophy first awarded in 1996.
  5. ^ The series doesn't have a nickname, but due to the close margin most years, several individual games do, such as the Earthquake Game in 1988, the Interception Game in 1994, the Barn Burner in 1996, Smoke 'Em if You Got 'Em in 1999, the Extra Point Game in 2004, the Doink Game in 2005, the Interference Game in 2006.
  6. ^ Series has only been played twice in regular season since 1987.
  7. ^ Played in Jacksonville. Now officially referred to as the "Florida-Georgia/Georgia-Florida Game" due to sensitivity about consumption of alcohol by college students.
  8. ^ For decades the trophy of this game was a red, white, and blue bourbon barrel, but this practice was discontinued in 1999 following a DUI accident that killed two Kentucky football players.
  9. ^ Whereabouts of the original rag are unknown; a new rag was presented to LSU after victories in 2001 and 2006. Series was only contested twice from 1995 through 2005, but a 10-year contract began in 2006.
  10. ^ For 74 years the trophy of this game was the Beer Barrel: an orange, white, and blue beer keg. However this practice was discontinued in 1999 following the aforementioned DUI accident.

[edit] Conference Play setup

From 1992 through 2001, each team had two permanent inter-divisional opponents, allowing many traditional rivalries from the pre-expansion era (such as Florida vs. Auburn, Kentucky vs. LSU and Vanderbilt vs. Alabama) to continue. However, complaints from some league athletic directors about imbalance in the schedule (for instance, Auburn's two permanent opponents from the East were Florida and Georgia – two of the SEC's stronger football programs – while Mississippi State played relatively weak South Carolina and Kentucky every year) led to the SEC reducing the permanent opponents to only one per team.

Under the current format, each school plays a total of eight conference games, consisting of the other five teams in its division, two schools from the other division on a rotating basis, plus one permanent rival from the other division which it plays each year (however, the lineup may or may not reflect a traditional rivalry):

West Division East Division
Alabama Tennessee
Arkansas South Carolina
Auburn Georgia
Mississippi State Kentucky
LSU Florida
Ole Miss Vanderbilt

Other league athletic directors have advocated discarding the current format and adopting the one used by the Big 12 Conference, where teams play three teams from the opposite division on a home-and-home basis for two seasons, and then switch and play the other three teams from the opposite side for a two-year home-and-home. However, the potential loss of such heated (and profitable, as the games are often shown on national TV) long-standing rivalries as LSU-Florida, Alabama-Tennessee, and Auburn-Georgia have scuttled such plans on the drawing board.

Interestingly, prior to the institution of divisional play, many of Auburn's yearly rivalries were with teams in the East (Florida, Georgia and Tennessee), while Vanderbilt faced Alabama and Ole Miss every year.

[edit] Rivalries in Other Sports in the SEC

The top athletic priority throughout the SEC is football, with one large exception—Kentucky, with one of the most storied men's basketball traditions in the country. Vanderbilt and Arkansas also place more emphasis on basketball vis-a-vis football than most other SEC schools, although the Razorbacks have had consistent success in football and routinely sell out their 72,000-seat stadium.

Despite the conference-wide emphasis on football, several rivalries have developed in other sports:

[edit] Men's basketball

Teams play a 16-game conference schedule, facing each team from its own division twice and each team from the opposite division once. Prior to expansion, teams played a double round-robin, leading to an exhausting 18-game conference schedule. Not surprisingly, no team ever ran the table when the conference schedule featured 18 games; three teams went 17-1 (Kentucky in 1970 and 1986, LSU in 1981). Since the league slate was trimmed to 16 games, Kentucky has gone undefeated in SEC play in 1996 and 2003.

The dominance of these two teams in the '90s over everyone else in the SEC led to quite a rivalry, mostly by default, being the best two teams in the conference. The rivalry has cooled in recent years as the Razorbacks have slipped toward the middle of the pack in the SEC West and the Wildcats have slipped toward the middle of the pack in the SEC East.
This conference matchup has become a major rivalry in recent years with the rise of the Florida basketball program under Billy Donovan.
A historic "border war" between two of the sport's historic giants. This rivalry is traditionally played at neutral sites, the RCA Dome (Lucas Oil Stadium beginning in 2009) in Indianapolis and Freedom Hall in Louisville, rather than in Bloomington and Lexington.
This rivalry, unlike most that involve SEC schools, is relatively recent. For nearly 60 years, UK refused to schedule U of L in the regular season in either basketball or football. After a pulsating U of L victory over UK in the Mideast Regional final in the 1983 NCAA basketball tournament, pressure mounted on UK to schedule U of L; Cardinals supporters went so far as to propose a law mandating that the two schools schedule one another. The bill was never introduced, as a basketball series began in the 1983-84 season. The rivalry added a new edge in 2001 when the Cardinals hired former Kentucky coach Rick Pitino (although he was not hired directly from UK). Former UK head coach Tubby Smith is a former UK assistant under Pitino, and reportedly recommended Pitino to Louisville.
This rivalry is also a "border war.", and the schools are located just three hours apart on Interstate 75. The two teams have played over 200 times in their history. When the two teams play at Knoxville, Thompson-Boling Arena is almost always sold out, one of the few games to sell out in the Volunteers' 24,535-seat arena.
Not only are these two schools the closest to one another geographically within the SEC - a mere 95 miles separate them - but their respective head coaches, Mark Gottfried and Rick Stansbury, often battle each other for the same recruits.
What had been a recent football rivalry has become a basketball rivalry as well, as the Volunteers under Bruce Pearl (and even previously under Buzz Peterson) have had recent success against new basketball superpower Florida.

[edit] Other sports

The Lady Vols have historically been one of the nation's dominant programs in that sport. Starting in the mid-1990s, UConn has emerged as Tennessee's main rival for national prominence. The Huskies won four national titles between 2000 and 2004; in three of those years, their victim in the NCAA final was Tennessee. Connecticut also defeated Tennessee in the 1995 Championhip game, the Huskies' first-ever title. For more information, see UConn-Tennessee rivalry.
These two storied programs have often butted heads for not only SEC titles, but NCAA titles, as well. There is also allegedly a personal rivalry between the head coaches. Georgia has won seven national championships to Alabama's four.
Historically these schools are arch-rivals, but following Tulane's decades long deemphasis of sports, this is the only sport in which the two schools are evenly matched. On several occasions matchups between the two have drawn national record-setting attendances. Tulane reached its first College World Series in 2001 by defeating LSU in three games in the super regional at Zephyr Field.
Prior to the arrival of Skip Bertman as LSU's baseball coach in 1984, Mississippi State had long dominated the conference in baseball, with most of that success coming under legendary coach Ron Polk (who returned to coach the Bulldogs in 2002 after retiring following the 1997 season), who coached future MLB stars such as Rafael Palmeiro, Will Clark and Jeff Brantley. But when Bertman arrived in Baton Rouge, LSU's long-dormant program took off, winning 11 SEC championships and five College World Series championships in 18 seasons from 1984 through 2001. This success in Omaha has been a constant source of irritation to the State faithful, who still are waiting for their first national championship trophy in Starkville. These two programs are also among only a handful in college baseball to turn a profit (fellow SEC rivals Ole Miss and Arkansas are others), as financial red ink has forced many schools in BCS conferences (such as Colorado, Iowa State, Oregon and Wisconsin) to drop the sport.
One of the youngest rivalries featuring an SEC team, the Tigers and Texas Longhorns are the two most successful swimming and diving programs in the country. The two have combined for 16 National Titles since 1981 (9 for Texas, 7 for Auburn) and have won every single title since 1999. The two regularly face off in a meet during the regular season, Auburn owns a 11-7 record over the Longhorns. Texas is the only team to beat Auburn since 2001.

[edit] National Championships

Since its founding in 1932, SEC members have won a total of 160 team national championships (as of March 17 2007). For more info, see the List of SEC National Champions article.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Fan Sites


NCAA Division I Bowl Subdivision Football Conferences:
Atlantic Coast Conference* – Big 12 Conference* – Big East Conference* – Big Ten Conference* – Conference USA – Mid-American Conference – Mountain West Conference – Pacific Ten Conference* – Southeastern Conference* – Sun Belt Conference – Western Athletic Conference – Independents
* – BCS Conference


Southeastern Conference
Eastern Division: Florida • Georgia • Kentucky • South Carolina • Tennessee • Vanderbilt
Western Division: Alabama • Arkansas • Auburn • LSU • Mississippi • Mississippi State
Football Stadiums of the Southeastern Conference
Ben Hill Griffin Stadium (Florida) • Bryant-Denny Stadium (Alabama) • Commonwealth Stadium (Kentucky) • Davis Wade Stadium (Mississippi State) • Jordan-Hare Stadium (Auburn) • Neyland Stadium (Tennessee) • Razorback Stadium (Arkansas) • Sanford Stadium (Georgia) • Tiger Stadium (LSU) • Vanderbilt Stadium (Vanderbilt) • Vaught-Hemingway Stadium (Ole Miss) • Williams-Brice Stadium (South Carolina)
Basketball arenas of the Southeastern Conference
Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum (Auburn) • Bud Walton Arena (Arkansas) • Coleman Coliseum (Alabama) • Colonial Center (South Carolina) • Humphrey Coliseum (Mississippi State) • Memorial Coliseum (Kentucky women) • Memorial Gymnasium (Vanderbilt) • Pete Maravich Assembly Center (LSU) • Rupp Arena (Kentucky men) • Stegeman Coliseum (Georgia) • Stephen C. O'Connell Center (Florida) • Tad Smith Coliseum (Ole Miss) • Thompson-Boling Arena (Tennessee)
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