The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is a collegiate athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its 16 members include the flagship public universities of 12 states, 3 additional public land-grant universities, and 1 private research university. The conference is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. The SEC participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I in sports competitions. In football, it is part of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A.
The SEC was established in 1932 by 13 members of the Southern Conference. Three charter members left by the late 1960s, but additions in 1990 and 2012 grew the conference to 14 member institutions. The conference expanded to 16 members with the addition of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas in 2024.
In 1992, the SEC was the first NCAA Division I conference to have a championship game for football and was one of the founding member conferences of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The conference sponsors team championships in nine men's sports and 13 women's sports. The conference distributed $721.8 million to its 14 schools in 2022.
Member universities
Current members
The SEC consists of 16 member institutions located in the U.S. states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
The SEC was formerly divided into East and West Divisions, although the divisional alignment was not strictly geographic, with Missouri in the East Division while being farther west than all West Division schools except Arkansas and Texas A&M, and Auburn in the West Division despite being located farther east than East Division schools Missouri and Vanderbilt. These divisional groupings were applied only in football, men's basketball (prior to 2011–12), baseball, and women's soccer both for scheduling and standings purposes. In football, the winner of each division met in the SEC Championship Game. The SEC eliminated its divisional groupings when Oklahoma and Texas joined in 2024.
Notes
Membership map
Former members
Three schools have left the SEC, all charter members:
The University of the South ("Sewanee") developed an elite college football program around the turn of the 20th century, with some observers opining that the 1899 "Iron Tigers" were the most dominant squad in history. However, after helping to establish the SEC in the early 1930s, it became clear that the small private institution's athletic teams could no longer compete with those from large state universities. Sewanee Tigers football squads never won a conference game, going 0–36 in league play over eight seasons while enjoying much more success against non-conference foes from comparably-sized institutions. As such, Sewanee opted to leave the SEC after the 1940 season and transitioned its athletic programs to the lower divisions of intercollegiate play. The school is currently a member of the Southern Athletic Association (SAA).
Georgia Tech left the SEC in 1964 due to controversy over the conference's regulation of recruiting and scholarships. Georgia Tech athletic director and head football coach Bobby Dodd had lobbied the league to establish rules prohibiting several practices, particularly the oversigning of players by Alabama coach Bear Bryant and others. When league members voted against tightening the rules, Dodd withdrew the Yellow Jackets from the SEC. The school played as an independent for several years until 1978, when Georgia Tech joined the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).
Tulane left the SEC in 1966. Although the school's athletic squads were competitive in the conference's early days, the private institution's programs struggled to compete against large state universities. This was particularly true in football, where the Green Wave were SEC champions in 1949 but never again posted a winning record in conference play. Tulane left the SEC in 1966 and subsequently considered dropping to lower levels of NCAA competition or ending its football program to focus on academics. However, the school has remained in Division I and is currently in the American Conference.
Notes
History
Founding
The SEC was established December 8 and 9, 1932, in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the Farragut Hotel, when the thirteen members of the large Southern Conference located west and south of the Appalachian Mountains left to form their own conference. Ten of the thirteen founding members have remained in the conference since its inception: the University of Alabama, Auburn University, the University of Florida, the University of Georgia, the University of Kentucky, Louisiana State University ("LSU"), the University of Mississippi ("Ole Miss"), Mississippi State University, the University of Tennessee, and Vanderbilt University. The SEC had no formal headquarters during its first eight years of existence, but in 1940, former Governor of Mississippi Martin "Mike" Conner was named the conference's first president, with the league establishing its first corporate headquarters on the 13th floor of the Standard Life Building in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. The SEC office remained there until 1948, when it moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where it remains. The three founding members that have since left the conference are Sewanee, who left after the 1940 season to drop all athletic scholarships and become a D-III Independent; Georgia Tech, who left after the 1963 season and became a D-I Independent; and Tulane, who left after the 1965 season and became a D-I Independent.
In 1935, the SEC became the first conference to legalize athletic scholarships.
Racial integration
White southerners committed to maintaining segregation created controversy preceding the 1956 Sugar Bowl, when the Pitt Panthers, with African-American fullback Bobby Grier on the roster, met the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. White southern segregationists created controversy by claiming that Grier should be barred from the game due to his race, and whether Georgia Tech should even play at all due to Georgia's Governor Marvin Griffin's opposition to racial integration. After Griffin publicly sent a telegram to the state's Board of Regents requesting Georgia Tech not to engage in racially integrated events, Georgia Tech's president Blake R. Van Leer rejected the request and threatened to resign. The game went on as planned.
The 1959 Mississippi State men's basketball team, led by all-American Bailey Howell, finished its season 24–1, winning the conference title. They did not participate in the NCAA tournament as school and state officials would not permit the team to play against Black players from northern schools. Four years later, in 1963, Loyola, with four black starters, played Mississippi State in the "Game of Change".
It was not until 1966 that African Americans first participated in an SEC athletic contest, and the first black scholarship athletes did not play in the SEC until the 1967–68 school year.
The first African American to compete in the SEC was Stephen Martin, who walked on to the Tulane baseball team in that school's final SEC season of 1966. In August of that same year, Kentucky enrolled Nate Northington and Greg Page on football scholarships, and Vanderbilt enrolled Godfrey Dillard and Perry Wallace on basketball scholarships. At the time, the NCAA did not allow freshmen to compete on varsity teams, which meant that these pioneers could not play until 1967. Page died from complications of a spinal cord injury suffered during a football practice before ever playing a game, while Dillard suffered a career-altering injury before getting a chance to play for Vanderbilt's varsity and transferred to Eastern Michigan. The remaining two both played in the 1967–68 school year. Northington made his overall debut against Indiana on September 23, 1967 and his SEC debut against Ole Miss the following week on September 30 (the day after Page's death), while Wallace made his varsity debut later that year.
1990 expansion
In 1990, the SEC expanded from ten to twelve member universities with the addition of the Arkansas Razorbacks and the South Carolina Gamecocks. The two new members began SEC competition with the 1991–1992 basketball season.
At the same time, the SEC organized competition for some sports into two divisions. The Western Division comprised six of the seven member schools in the Central Time Zone, while the Eastern Division comprised the five member schools in the Eastern Time Zone plus Vanderbilt, which is in the Central Time Zone but was placed in the Eastern Division to preserve its rivalry with Tennessee. Initially, the divisional format was used in football, baseball, and men's basketball. The divisional format was dropped for men's basketball following the 2011–2012 season.
Following expansion, the SEC was the first conference to receive permission from the NCAA to sponsor an annual football championship game that did not count against NCAA limits on regular-season contests, featuring the winners of the conference's Eastern and Western divisions. The 1992 and 1993 championship games were held at Legion Field in Birmingham, and all championship games from 1994 onward have been held in Atlanta—first at the Georgia Dome until its closure and demolition after the 2016 season, and since 2017 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
2012 expansion
On September 25, 2011, the SEC Presidents and Chancellors, acting unanimously, announced that Texas A&M University would join the SEC effective July 1, 2012, to begin competition in nineteen of the twenty sports sponsored by the SEC during the 2012–13 academic year. On November 6, 2011, the SEC commissioner announced that the University of Missouri would also join the SEC on July 1, 2012. For football, Texas A&M was scheduled to compete in the Western Division, and Missouri in the Eastern Division. Texas A&M and Missouri both left the Big 12 Conference.
2024 expansion
On July 27, 2021, Oklahoma and Texas formally notified the SEC they were seeking "an invitation for membership." In a joint letter, Texas president Jay Hartzell and Oklahoma president Joseph Harroz Jr. wrote, "We believe that there would be mutual benefit to the Universities on the one hand, and the SEC on the other hand, for the Universities to become members of the SEC." On July 29, 2021, the presidents of the current 14 schools of the SEC voted unanimously to extend an offer of admission to Oklahoma and Texas. The boards of regents for both institutions on July 30, 2021, accepted conference membership, and the schools were tentatively scheduled to join the league in 2025.
On February 9, 2023, the Big 12, Texas, and Oklahoma announced they had reached a buyout agreement that allowed the schools to join the SEC in 2024. The Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners athletic teams thus began league play during the 2024–25 academic year.
Membership timeline
Full members
Full members (non-football)
Other Conference
Other Conference
Commissioners
The office of Commissioner was created in 1940.
SEC Academic Network
In 2005, the member institutions of the Southeastern Conference formed the SEC Academic Consortium (SECAC), a collaborative endeavor designed to promote research, scholarship, and achievement amongst the universities.
In 2011, the SEC Academic Consortium relocated from its original home on the campus of the University of Arkansas to the SEC headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama and was renamed SECU. The SECU rebranded its mission to better serve as a means through which the collaborative academic endeavors and achievements of Southeastern Conference universities would be promoted and advanced. The SECU's goals included highlighting the endeavors and achievements of SEC faculty, students, and its universities; advancing the academic reputation of SEC universities; identifying and preparing future leaders for high-level service in academia; increasing the amount and type of study abroad opportunities available for students; and providing opportunities for collaboration among SEC university personnel. The Big Ten Conference, since 1958, has had a similar program, now called the Big Ten Academic Alliance.
The SEC Symposium component of SECU was crafted by Vanderbilt University Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos, who at the time was the Vice President of the SEC Executive Committee and liaison to SECU. In an interview with Dr. Zeppos about the formation of the SECU he noted, "that the member institutions of the Southeastern Conference are committed to a shared mission of fostering research, scholarship, and achievement. The SEC Symposium represents a platform to connect, collaborate and promote a productive dialogue that will span disciplinary and institutional boundaries and allow us to work together for the betterment of society."
The SEC Academic Network was created in 2009 in partnership with ESPN. The SEC Academic Network was an online library of institutionally produced videos featuring academic initiatives and stories from all Southeastern Conference institutions. The SEC Academic Network was officially merged into the SECU operation.
CNBC list of the most valuable SEC schools
Rankings as of December 19, 2025 (2024–2025 academic year)
Athletic department revenue by school
Total revenue includes ticket sales, contributions and donations, rights and licensing, student fees, school funds and all other sources including TV income, camp income, concessions, and novelties.
Total expenses includes coach and staff salaries, scholarships, buildings and grounds, maintenance, utilities and rental fees, recruiting, team travel, equipment and uniforms, conference dues, and insurance.
The following table shows institutional reporting to the United States Department of Education as shown on the DOE Equity in Athletics website for the 2023–24 academic year.
The following table shows Southeastern Conference distributions during the fiscal year beginning 09-01-2024 ending 08-31-2025 as reported by ProPublica using Schedule A of the Southeastern Conference tax filing submitted on February 4, 2026.
Key personnel
Facilities
Sports
The Southeastern Conference sponsors championship competition in nine men's and thirteen women's NCAA sanctioned sports. 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. A similar rule was recently adopted by the NCAA for all of Division I.
Men's sponsored sports by school
Men's varsity sports not sponsored by the Southeastern Conference which are played by SEC schools:
Women's sponsored sports by school
Women's varsity sports not sponsored by the Southeastern Conference which are played by SEC schools: