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Southeastern Conference

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right 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 (I-A in football). 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 $110.7 million in the 2004-2005 fiscal year [link]. 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 [link].

History

Michael L. Slive is the current commissioner of the SEC.
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Michael L. Slive is the current commissioner of the SEC.

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 other charter members were:

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. 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.

Current members (and year joined)

The SEC currently has twelve member institutions in nine Southeastern states. The geograpic domain of the conference streches 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 of the Deep South.

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 41,094 1932
University of Georgia Athens, Georgia
(100,266)
1785 Public 32,200 1932
University of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky
(266,358)
1865 Public 24,317 1932
University of South Carolina Columbia, South Carolina
(116,278)
1801 Public 27,065 1991
University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee
(173,890)
1794 Public 27,281 1932
Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee
(561,891)
1873 Private
(Non-sect.)
11,500 1932

West Division
Institution Location
(Population)
Founded Affiliation Enrollment Year Joined
University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Alabama
(79,294)
1831 Public 21,750 1932
University of Arkansas Fayetteville, Arkansas
(58,047)
1871 Public 17,821 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

SEC East

Image:Floridasec2.gif|Florida Gators Image:Georgiasec.gif|Georgia Bulldogs Image:Kentuckysec.gif|Kentucky Wildcats Image:Southcarolinasec.gif|South Carolina Gamecocks Image:Tennesseesec.gif|Tennessee Volunteers Image:Vandy.jpg|Vanderbilt Commodores

SEC West

Image:Alabama1.gif|Alabama Crimson Tide Image:Arkansassec.gif|Arkansas Razorbacks Image:Auburnsec2.gif|Auburn Tigers Image:Lsusec.gif|LSU Tigers Image:Mississippisec.gif|Ole Miss Rebels Image:Mississippistatesec.gif|Mississippi State Bulldogs

Sports sponsored

150px
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.

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)
72,000
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 90,716 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 67,606 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 7,760
Ole Miss Vaught-Hemingway Stadium 60,580 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 7,200
South Carolina Williams-Brice Stadium 80,250 Colonial Center 18,000 Sarge Frye Field 5,000
Tennessee Neyland Stadium 104,079 Thompson-Boling Arena 24,535 Lindsey Nelson Stadium 4,000
Vanderbilt Vanderbilt Stadium 41,203 Memorial Gymnasium 14,168 Hawkins Field 1,500

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:

The "Golden Boot" trophy is held by the current winner of the annual Arkansas Razorbacks vs. LSU Tigers football game.
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The "Golden Boot" trophy is held by the current winner of the annual Arkansas Razorbacks vs. LSU Tigers football game.

Rivalry Name Trophy
Alabama-Tennessee The Third Saturday In October
Arkansas-LSU The Battle for the Golden Boot The Golden Boot
Alabama-Auburn The Iron Bowl ODK-James E. Foy V Sportsmanship Trophy
Auburn-Georgia The Deep South's Oldest Rivalry
Auburn-LSU
Florida-Florida State Battle for the Governor's Cup
Florida-Miami The War Canoe
Florida-Georgia The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail PartyPlayed in Jacksonville. Now officially referred to as the "Florida-Georgia/Georgia-Florida Game" due to sensitivity about consumption of alcohol by college students.
Florida-Tennessee The Third Saturday in September
Georgia-Georgia Tech Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate The Governor's Cup
Kentucky-Indiana NoneFor 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.
Kentucky-Louisville The Governor's Cup
LSU-Tulane The Battle for the Rag The Rag
LSU-Ole Miss
Mississippi State-Ole Miss The Egg Bowl The Golden Egg Trophy
South Carolina-Clemson Battle of the Palmetto State
Tennessee-Kentucky NoneFor 74 years the trophy of this game was an orange, white, and blue beer keg, but this practice was discontinued in 1999 following the aforementioned DUI accident.
Tennessee-Vanderbilt

Each school has a permanent rival from the other division which it plays each year in football (though this may or may not reflect a traditional rivalry). Each East Division school's permanent rival from the West Division:

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

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. 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, while Mississsippi State played South Carolina and Kentucky every year) led to the adoption of the "5-1-2" format currently in place.

Other league athletic directors have advocated adopting the format 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 popular rivalries as 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 rivlaries were with teams in the East (Florida, Georgia and Tennessee), while Vanderbilt faced Alabama and Ole Miss every year.

In addition to the permanent inter-division rival, each football team plays all of its five division opponents plus two rotating opponents from the other division, for a total of eight conference games per season.

Rivalries in Other Sports in the SEC

The top athletic priority throughout the SEC is football, with one exception. Kentucky, which has one of the most storied basketball traditions in the country, is also one of only two Division I-A schools to earn more revenue from its basketball program than its football program. (The other is Arizona.) 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:

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 eveyone else in the SEC led to quite a rivalry, mostly by default of being the best two teams in the conference.
  • Kentucky-Florida
  • This premier conference matchup has become a major rivalry in recent years with the rise of the Florida basketball program under former Kentucky assistant coach, Billy Donovan, who played at Providence College for former Kentucky coach Rick Pitino.
  • Kentucky-Indiana
  • A historic "border war" between two of the sport's giants. This rivalry is traditionally played at neutral sites, the RCA Dome in Indianapolis and Freedom Hall in Louisville, rather than in Bloomington and Lexington.
  • Kentucky-Louisville
  • 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). Current UK head coach Tubby Smith is a former UK assistant under Pitino, and reportedly recommended Pitino to Louisville.
  • Kentucky-Tennessee
  • This rivalry is also a "border war." 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, but many times at least half the fans are wearing Kentucky blue, as Tennessee struggles to fill the 24,000-seat arena to capacity for men's games, a stark contrast to the sellouts often witnessed at Tenneseee women's games.
  • Alabama-Mississippi State
  • 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.

    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. For more information, see UConn-Tennessee rivalry.
  • Alabama-Georgia, women's gymnastics
  • 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.
  • LSU-Tulane, baseball
  • Historically these schools are arch-rivals, but following Tulane's decades long deemphesis 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.
  • LSU-Mississippi State, baseball
  • 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.

    National Championships

    Since its founding in 1932, SEC members have won a total of 150 team national championships (as of June 5th 2005). Listed below are all championship teams of NCAA sponsored events, as well as the titles won in football. Conference members have won at least one title in all but two of the sponsored events, Softball and Women's Volleyball.

    Football* (18):
    1934 - Alabama
    1941 - Alabama
    1942 - Georgia
    1946 - Georgia
    1951 - Tennessee
    1952 - Georgia Tech
    1957 - Auburn
    1958 - LSU
    1960 - Ole Miss
    1961 - Alabama
    1962 - Ole Miss
    1964 - Alabama
    1965 - Alabama
    1973 - Alabama
    1978 - Alabama
    1979 - Alabama
    1980 - Georgia
    1992 - Alabama
    1996 - Florida
    1998 - Tennessee
    2003 - LSU
    Men's Basketball (9):
    1948 - Kentucky
    1949 - Kentucky
    1951 - Kentucky
    1958 - Kentucky
    1978 - Kentucky
    1994 - Arkansas
    1996 - Kentucky
    1998 - Kentucky
    2006 - Florida
    Women's Basketball (6):
    1987 - Tennessee
    1989 - Tennessee
    1991 - Tennessee
    1996 - Tennessee
    1997 - Tennessee
    1998 - Tennessee
    Baseball (6):
    1990 - Georgia
    1991 - LSU
    1993 - LSU
    1996 - LSU
    1997 - LSU
    2000 - LSU
    Women's Soccer (1):
    1998 - Florida
    Men's Indoor Track & Field (12):
    1993 - Arkansas
    1994 - Arkansas
    1995 - Arkansas
    1997 - Arkansas
    1998 - Arkansas
    1999 - Arkansas
    2000 - Arkansas
    2001 - LSU
    2002 - Tennessee
    2003 - Arkansas
    2004 - LSU
    2005 - Arkansas
    Women's Indoor Track & Field (13):
    1987 - LSU
    1989 - LSU
    1991 - LSU
    1992 - Florida
    1993 - LSU
    1994 - LSU
    1995 - LSU
    1996 - LSU
    1997 - LSU
    2002 - LSU
    2003 - LSU
    2004 - LSU
    2005 - Tennessee
    Men's Outdoor Track & Field (16):
    1933 - LSU
    1974 - Tennessee
    1989 - LSU
    1990 - LSU
    1991 - Tennessee
    1993 - Arkansas
    1994 - Arkansas
    1995 - Arkansas
    1996 - Arkansas
    1997 - Arkansas
    1998 - Arkansas
    1999 - Arkansas
    2001 - Tennessee
    2002 - LSU
    2003 - Arkansas
    2004 - Arkansas
    2005 - Arkansas
    Women's Outdoor Track & Field (14):
    1987 - LSU
    1988 - LSU
    1989 - LSU
    1990 - LSU
    1991 - LSU
    1992 - LSU
    1993 - LSU
    1994 - LSU
    1995 - LSU
    1996 - LSU
    1997 - LSU
    2000 - LSU
    2002 - South Carolina
    2003 - LSU
    2006 - Auburn
    Men's Cross Country (7):
    1972 - Tennessee
    1992 - Arkansas
    1993 - Arkansas
    1995 - Arkansas
    1998 - Arkansas
    1999 - Arkansas
    2000 - Arkansas
    Women's Cross Country (1):
    1988 - Kentucky
    Men's Swimming & Diving (9):
    1978 - Tennessee
    1983 - Florida
    1984 - Florida
    1997 - Auburn
    1999 - Auburn
    2003 - Auburn
    2004 - Auburn
    2005 - Auburn
    2006 - Auburn
    Women's Swimming & Diving (9):
    1982 - Florida
    1999 - Georgia
    2000 - Georgia
    2001 - Georgia
    2002 - Auburn
    2003 - Auburn
    2004 - Auburn
    2005 - Georgia
    2006 - Auburn
    Men's Tennis (3):
    1985 - Georgia
    1987 - Georgia
    2001 - Georgia
    Women's Tennis (6):
    1992 - Florida
    1994 - Georgia
    1996 - Florida
    1998 - Florida
    2000 - Georgia
    2003 - Florida
    Men's Golf (10):
    1940 - LSU
    1942 - LSU
    1947 - LSU
    1955 - LSU
    1968 - Florida
    1973 - Florida
    1993 - Florida
    1999 - Georgia
    2001 - Florida
    2005 - Georgia
    Women's Golf (3):
    1995 - Florida
    1996 - Florida
    2001 - Georgia
    Women's Gymnastics (11):
    1987 - Georgia
    1988 - Alabama
    1989 - Georgia
    1991 - Alabama
    1993 - Georgia
    1996 - Alabama
    1998 - Georgia
    1999 - Georgia
    2002 - Alabama
    2005 - Georgia
    2006 - Georgia


    See also

    External links


     


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