The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college 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, three additional public land-grant universities, and one 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 league expanded to 16 members with the addition of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas in 2024.[3]
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.[4]
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 strictly geographic, with Missouri in the East Division while being farther west than several West Division schools, and Auburn in the West Division despite being located farther east than East Division schools Missouri and Vanderbilt.[5] These divisional groupings were applied only in football, baseball, and women's soccer, for both scheduling and standings purposes. In football, the two division winners met in the SEC Championship Game.
The SEC eliminated its baseball and football divisions once Oklahoma and Texas joined in 2024.[6][7]
