Southeastern Conference

The Southeastern Conference 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 Division I in sports competitions. In football, it is part of the Football Bowl Subdivision, 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. 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

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, 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.

Institution	Location	Founded	Joined	Type	Enrollment	Endowment	Nickname	Colors
University of Alabama	Tuscaloosa, Alabama	1831	1932	Public	39,622	$2.379	Crimson Tide
University of Arkansas	Fayetteville, Arkansas	1871	1992	Public	32,140	$1.666	Razorbacks
Auburn University	Auburn, Alabama	1856	1932	Public	33,015	$1.187	Tigers
University of Florida	Gainesville, Florida	1853	1932	Public	54,814	$2.454	Gators
University of Georgia	Athens, Georgia	1785	1932	Public	41,615	$2.056	Bulldogs
University of Kentucky	Lexington, Kentucky	1865	1932	Public	32,703	$1.979	Wildcats
Louisiana State University	Baton Rouge, Louisiana	1860	1932	Public	39,418	$1.138	Tigers
University of Mississippi	University, Mississippi	1848	1932	Public	24,043	$0.925	Rebels
Mississippi State University	Mississippi State, Mississippi	1878	1932	Public	22,657	$0.895	Bulldogs
University of Missouri	Columbia, Missouri	1839	2012	Public	31,013	$2.411	Tigers
University of Oklahoma	Norman, Oklahoma	1890	2024	Public	29,145	$1.808	Sooners
University of South Carolina	Columbia, South Carolina	1801	1992	Public	36,579	$1.044	Gamecocks
University of Tennessee	Knoxville, Tennessee	1794	1932	Public	36,304	$1.766	Volunteers
University of Texas at Austin	Austin, Texas	1883	2024	Public	53,082	$47.465	Longhorns
Texas A&M University	College Station, Texas	1876	2012	Public	76,633	$20.381	Aggies
Vanderbilt University	Nashville, Tennessee	1873	1932	Private	13,456	$10.248	Commodores

; Notes

Membership map

Former members

Three schools have left the SEC, all charter members:

The University of the South 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.
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.
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.

Institution	Location	Establishment	Joined SEC	Left SEC	Type	Nickname	Colors	Current conference
Sewanee: The University of the South	Sewanee, Tennessee	1857	1932	1940	Private	Tigers		SAA
Georgia Institute of Technology	Atlanta, Georgia	1885	1932	1964	Public	Yellow Jackets		ACC
Tulane University	New Orleans, Louisiana	1834	1932	1966	Private	Green Wave		American

;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, the University of Mississippi, 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, while Wallace made his varsity debut later that year.