Southeastern Conference

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 is divided into East and West Divisions, although the divisional alignment is not 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 are applied only in football, baseball, and women's soccer, for both scheduling and standings purposes. In football, the two division winners meet in the SEC Championship Game.

The SEC will eliminate its baseball and football divisions once Oklahoma and Texas join in 2024, however, soccer will continue to use divisions.[6][7]

Since July 1, 2012, there are 14 members, with Vanderbilt being the only private institution.

Notes

On July 27, 2021, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas at Austin (athletically "Texas") formally notified the SEC they were seeking "an invitation for membership" beginning July 1, 2025.[13] 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.[14] On July 30, 2021, both institutions' boards of regents unanimously voted to accept the invitation, effective for the 2025–26 academic year. On February 9, 2023, both institutions announced they had reached a settlement with the Big 12 Conference that allowed them to join the SEC on July 1, 2024.[3]

Three schools have left the SEC, all charter members:

• The University of the South ("Sewanee") had been one of the preeminent programs in college football around the turn of the 20th century. 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.[15] As such, Sewanee opted to leave the SEC after the 1940 season and transitioned its athletic programs to the lower divisions of intercollegiate play.[16] The school is currently a member of the Division III Southern Athletic Association.
• Georgia Tech left the SEC in 1964 due to controversy over the conference's lax 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.[17] When league members voted against tightening the rules, Dodd withdrew the Yellow Jackets' athletic programs from the SEC. Georgia Tech eventually joined another Southern Conference offshoot, the Atlantic Coast Conference, in 1978.[15]
• Tulane left the SEC in 1966. The school's sports teams were competitive in the early days of the conference. However, like Sewanee, the private institution's programs found it difficult to compete against large state universities. This was particularly true of football; Tulane's 1949 SEC championship squad was the last to post a winning record in conference play. Tulane decided to leave the league in 1966 and considered dropping to lower levels of NCAA competition or even ending its football program altogether to focus on academics.[18] However, the school remained in Division I, and the Green Wave has competed in the American Athletic Conference since 2014.[15]

The SEC was established December 8 and 9, 1932, in Knoxville, Tennessee, 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 ("Vandy").

Bobby Grier playing against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in 1955

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.[19] 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.[20][21][22] 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.[23]

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".[24]

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.[25] In August of that same year, Kentucky enrolled Nate Northington and Greg Page on football scholarships,[26] and Vanderbilt enrolled Godfrey Dillard and Perry Wallace on basketball scholarships.[27] 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,[26] while Dillard suffered a career-altering injury before getting a chance to play for Vanderbilt's varsity and transferred to Eastern Michigan.[27] The remaining two both played in the 1967–68 school year. Northington made his overall debut against Indiana on September 23, 1967[28][29] and his SEC debut against Ole Miss the following week on September 30 (the day after Page's death[26]), while Wallace made his varsity debut later that year.[30]

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.[31] 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.[31]

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.[32] On November 6, 2011, the SEC commissioner announced that the University of Missouri would also join the SEC on July 1, 2012.[33] For football, Texas A&M was scheduled to compete in the Western Division, and Missouri in the Eastern Division.[34][35][36][37] Texas A&M and Missouri both left the Big 12 Conference.

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."[13] 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.[14] 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 will allow the schools to join the SEC in 2024. The Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners athletic teams are slated to begin league play during the 2024–25 academic year.[38]

Full members  Full members (non-football)  Other Conference  Other Conference 

Men's varsity sports not sponsored by the Southeastern Conference which are played by SEC schools (future members in gray):

Women's varsity sports not sponsored by the Southeastern Conference which are played by SEC schools (future members in gray):

• In addition to the above, Kentucky lists its coeducational cheerleading squad and its all-female dance team as varsity teams on its athletics website.

• (RS) indicates regular-season champion
• (T) indicates tournament champion

Source: SECSports.com.[95]

SEC teams did not play a uniform number of conference games until 1974. Prior to that, the number of conference games teams played ranged from four to eight, but most played a 6- or 7- game schedule. The league adopted a uniform 6-game schedule from 1974 to 1987, and added a seventh conference game from 1988 to 1991. Through this period and through the earlier years each SEC school had five permanent opponents, developing some traditional rivalries between schools, and the other games rotated around the other members of the conference.

After expansion to twelve programs in 1992, the SEC went to an 8-game conference schedule, with each team playing the five other teams in their division and three opponents from the other division. The winners of the two divisions would then meet in the SEC Championship Game.

From 1992 through 2002, 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 at the time – while Mississippi State played Kentucky and South Carolina every year) led to the SEC reducing the number of permanent inter-division opponents to one starting in the 2003 season. The TV networks televising SEC games were also pressuring for the change so attractive match-ups between non-traditional opponents would happen twice every five years instead of twice every eight years. With the subsequent expansion to 14 members in 2012, non-permanent cross-division opponents face each other in the regular season twice in a span of twelve years.

Under the current format, each school plays a total of eight conference games, consisting of the other six teams in its division, one school from the other division on a rotating basis, and one school from the other division that it plays each year. The permanent cross-division matchups are: Alabama–Tennessee; Arkansas–Missouri; Auburn–Georgia; LSU–Florida; Mississippi State–Kentucky; Ole Miss–Vanderbilt; Texas A&M–South Carolina.

The then-current scheduling arrangement was originally set to expire after the 2015 season, but the SEC presidents voted 10–4[96] in April 2014 to keep the current format for an additional six to eight seasons beyond 2015.[97] Additionally, since 2016, SEC teams have been required to schedule at least one opponent each season from the other so-called "Power Five" conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, or Pac-12); games against select football independent schools also qualify, including Army, BYU, and Notre Dame.[97][98][99]

In 2023, the SEC announced the divisional split would be scrapped when Oklahoma and Texas join in 2024. The conference schedule will remain at 8 games in the 2024 season while the SEC determines its long-term football scheduling format. Whether the conference schedule stays at 8 games or expands to 9 after 2024, each team will be guaranteed of playing all other conference teams home and away in a four-year cycle. The requirement of scheduling at least one Power Five or major independent (of note, BYU has since left the independent ranks for the Big 12) remains in place. The championship game will feature the top two teams in the conference standings, with tiebreakers as needed.[100]

Through end of the 2022/23 season including SEC Championship Game and bowl games. Records reflect official NCAA results, including any forfeits or win vacating.[101]

Notes:

• Alabama's record reflects 21 wins being vacated (2005–2007) and eight wins and one tie forfeited (1993).
• LSU's record reflects 37 wins being vacated (2012-2015) for major level-1 rule violations and playing with ineligible players.
• Mississippi State's record reflects 18 wins and one tie being forfeited (1975–1977).
• Ole Miss's record reflects 33 wins being vacated (2010–2016).
• Tennessee's record reflects 11 wins being vacated (2019-2020) for 18 Level -1 violations encompassing more than 200 individual infractions and an additional four (4) Level-1 unethical conduct violations along with playing 16 ineligible players.
• Two former members have also won conference titles, Georgia Tech five and Tulane three.

The SEC Championship Game pits the SEC West Division representative against the East Division representative in a game held after the regular season has been completed. The first two SEC Championship football games were held at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama. Since 1994, it has been played in Atlanta—first at the Georgia Dome through 2016, and since 2017 at its replacement, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, with the current hosting contract running through 2027.[102] The "home team" designation alternates between the division champions, going to the East champion in even-numbered years and the West champion in odd-numbered years. As of 2022, the West leads 18-13 in overall wins in the championship game against the East. Kentucky, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, and Vanderbilt are the only teams to not appear in the SEC Championship Game as of 2022.[103]

The post-season bowl game tie-ins for the SEC for the 2014–2019 seasons are:[104]

Payout is per team for the 2014 season; if different for opposing conference, payout for the SEC team is shown. Each conference member, irrespective of bowl participation, also receives an equal split of a payout to the SEC conference.[105][106][107]

^ The Sugar Bowl is contractually obligated to select the SEC champion if that team is not participating in the College Football Playoff. In years where the champion is unavailable the Playoff Committee will assign another SEC team to participate in the Sugar. Alternatively, in years where the Sugar hosts a playoff game the SEC Champion will be sent to the Fiesta, Cotton, or Peach Bowl if not selected for the playoff.

† The Big Ten and SEC will be eligible to face the ACC representative in the Orange Bowl at least three out of the eight seasons that it does not host a semifinal for the Playoff over a 12-year span. Notre Dame may be chosen the other two years if eligible.

° In years when the Big Ten places a team in the Orange Bowl, the Citrus Bowl will select from ACC teams remaining after the Playoff Committee and Orange Bowl make their selections.

‡ The Big Ten and ACC will switch between the Music City and Gator bowls on alternating years.

¤ For the 2020 through 2025 seasons, the Big Ten and SEC will alternate which conference sends a team to the Duke's Mayo Bowl or the Las Vegas Bowl. SEC will be in the Las Vegas Bowl during the even years and Duke's Mayo Bowl during the odd years.

The total pay of head coaches includes university and non-university compensation including base salary, income from contracts, foundation supplements, bonuses and media and radio pay as of the upcoming 2023 season. As a private institution, Vanderbilt is not obligated to disclose salary information.

Each year, the conference selects various individual awards. In 1994, the conference began honoring former players from each school annually with the SEC Football Legends program.

In 1982, the SEC Skywriters, a group of media covering the Southeastern Conference, selected members of their All-Time SEC Team for the first fifty years (1933–82) of the SEC.[109]

The members of the SEC have longstanding rivalries with each other, especially on the football field. The following is a list of active rivalries in the Southeastern Conference with totals & records through the completion of the 2022 season.

The table below lists each school's permanent men's basketball-only scheduling partners from 2014–15 through 2023–24.

The SEC men's basketball tournament (also known simply as the SEC tournament) is the competition that determines the SEC's automatic bid to the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Notably, it does not determine the SEC conference champion in men's basketball—the conference has awarded its championship to the team(s) with the best regular-season record since the 1950–51 season.[113] It is a single-elimination tournament and seeding is based on regular season records.

With the expansion to 14 members in 2012, the 2013 tournament was the first with a new format covering five days. The teams seeded eleven through fourteen play on the first day, with the winners advancing to play the No. 5 and No. 6 seeds on Thursday. The top four teams receive a "double bye" and do not play until the quarterfinals on Friday. The expansion to 16 teams in 2024 will result in two additional tournament games, but the top four teams will continue to receive "double byes" into the quarterfinals.[7]

As of the current 2022–23 season, the tournament has most often been held at two venues that have each hosted twelve times. Louisville Gardens in Louisville, Kentucky, served as the regular host from 1941 until the tournament was discontinued after the 1952 edition. The Georgia Dome in Atlanta first hosted the tournament in 1995 and most recently hosted in 2014. Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, is now the regular host, with that venue hosting the tournament from 2015 through 2030, except in 2018 and 2022 (years in which it instead hosted the SEC women's basketball tournament).[114] Sometimes, the tournament will take place at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, or Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida. The 2018 tournament was held at Scottrade Center, now Enterprise Center, in St. Louis, Missouri, and the 2022 tournament was at Amalie Arena.[115]

Prior to moving to the Georgia Dome, the tournament (during its modern, post-1979 era) was most often contested at the venue now known as Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, home of the SEC's headquarters and centrally located prior to the addition of Arkansas and South Carolina. Other sites to host include on-campus arenas at LSU, Tennessee and Vanderbilt; Rupp Arena in Lexington; and the Orlando Arena.

† denotes overtime games. Multiple †'s indicate more than one overtime.

The SEC Men's Basketball Player of the Year is awarded to the player who has proven himself, throughout the season, to be the most exceptional talent in the Southeastern Conference. Various other awards, such as the best tournament player in the SEC tournament and all conference honors are given out throughout the year.

Note: Teams in bold are current SEC members who advanced to the MCWS while in the conference. Teams in bold italics are current SEC members who were either in another conference or an independent at the time of their appearance. Teams in plain italics are future members.

Future members in gray.

Several baseball rivalries have developed in the SEC:

• LSU–Tulane

Historically these schools were arch-rivals in all sports, but following Tulane's decades-long de-emphasis of sports, including its exit from the SEC in 1966, baseball is the only sport in which the two schools are relatively evenly matched. On several occasions match-ups 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 NCAA Super Regional. In 2002, the Tigers and Green Wave drew an NCAA regular season record crowd of 27,673 to the Louisiana Superdome.

• LSU–Mississippi State

Before 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 coach Ron Polk, who returned to coach the Bulldogs in 2002 after retiring in 1997. When Bertman arrived in Baton Rouge, LSU's long-dormant program took off, winning eleven SEC championships and five College World Series championships between 1984 and 2001.

• South Carolina–Clemson

This instate rivalry is an intense local affair, with the Gamecocks and Tigers meeting each regular season, and has gained national prominence as both teams are often ranked in the top ten nationally. The highlights of the rivalry include the 2002 and 2010 meetings in the final four of the College World Series. Each time, South Carolina emerged from the losers bracket to beat Clemson twice and advance to the national championship series.

• South Carolina–North Carolina

The Gamecocks and Tar Heels met five times in the NCAA tournament between 2002 and 2013, including the 2002 NCAA Regional, 2003 NCAA Super Regional, 2004 NCAA Regional and 2013 NCAA Regional, with the Gamecocks holding a 3–2 edge.

The SEC women's basketball tournament is currently held a week before the men's basketball tournament. Like the men's version, it is a single-elimination tournament involving all conference members, with seeding based on regular season records. With the expansion to 14 schools, the bottom four teams in the conference standings play opening-round games, and the top four receive "double byes" into the quarterfinals. The winner earns the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA women's basketball tournament. Also paralleling the men's tournament, the women's tournament does not determine the SEC champion; that honor has been awarded based on regular-season record since the 1985–86 season.[122] The expansion to 16 teams will result in the addition of two extra games, but the top four teams in the conference standings will continue to receive "double byes" into the quarterfinals.[7]

The tournament, inaugurated in 1980, was originally held on campus sites; the first tournament to take place at a neutral site was in 1987. The three most frequent sites for the tournament have been McKenzie Arena in Chattanooga, Tennessee, (seven times), the Albany Civic Center in Albany, Georgia, (six times), and Bridgestone Arena in Nashville (also six times). However, the only one of these venues to have hosted the tournament in the 21st century is Bridgestone Arena. Because demand for women's tournament tickets is generally lower than for the men's tournament, it is typically played in a smaller venue than the men's tournament in the same season. The most frequent venues since 2000 have been Bridgestone Arena, Gas South Arena in Duluth, Georgia, (four), and Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock, Arkansas (four).

† denotes overtime games. Multiple †'s indicate more than one overtime.

• Tennessee–UConn

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 opponent in the NCAA final was Tennessee. Connecticut also defeated Tennessee in the 1995 Championship game, the Huskies' first-ever title. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame brokered a deal that saw the teams renew their rivalry with a home-and-home series in 2020 and 2021, and both schools have since announced they will extend the series through at least 2023.

• Alabama–Georgia, women's gymnastics

These two storied programs have often butted heads for not only SEC titles, but NCAA titles as well. Georgia has won ten national championships to Alabama's six. For decades the rivalry was dominated by the two long standing coaches of the two schools, Suzanne Yoculan of Georgia and Sarah Patterson of Alabama. Yoculan and Patterson have since retired, bringing their personal rivalry to an end.

• Alabama–Florida, women's softball

These two nationally acclaimed softball programs have proven to be the elite of the SEC and the nation. While consistently being ranked in the nation's Top Ten, both teams find their way to the SEC Tournament Finals and often clash once more in the Women's College Softball World Series.

• Tennessee–LSU, women's softball
• Auburn–Texas, men's swimming and diving

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 17 NCAA National Titles since 1981 (nine for Texas, eight for Auburn) and between 1999 and 2007 won every national title awarded. The two regularly face off in a meet during the regular season, Auburn's men own a 12–9 record over the Longhorns. The women just recently began an annual series, with the Tigers winning the series so far 3–1. Texas was the only team to beat the Auburn men between 2001 and 2007.[123]

The fourteen members of the Southeastern Conference claim over 200 national team championships in sports currently or formerly sponsored by conference members. The following totals include national team championships sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) from 1906 to present, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) from 1972 to 1982, and, in football, the Bowl Alliance, Bowl Coalition, Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and College Football Playoff (CFP) since 1992, as well as consensus national championships determined by the major football polls prior to 1992.[126]

• LSU – 51
• Arkansas – 50
• Florida – 47
• Georgia – 32
• Alabama – 28
• Tennessee – 22
• Auburn – 18
• Texas A&M – 16
• Kentucky – 14
• South Carolina – 5
• Vanderbilt – 5
• Ole Miss – 5
• Missouri – 2
• Mississippi State – 1

The following totals include national team tournament championships sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) from 1906 to the present and the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) from 1972 to 1982. The NCAA did not sponsor tournament championships in women's sports before the 1981–82 academic year, and the NCAA has never sponsored a national championship playoff or tournament in major college football. To date, the fourteen members of the SEC have won 216 NCAA and four AIAW championships,[127] including:

• LSU – 57
• Arkansas – 54
• Florida – 38
• Georgia – 29
• Tennessee – 17
• Auburn – 14
• Kentucky – 13
• Texas A&M – 12
• Alabama – 10
• South Carolina – 5
• Vanderbilt – 5
• Missouri – 2
• Ole Miss – 2
• Mississippi State – 1

The SEC created the College Football Association in 1977 with other major conferences to negotiate contracts for broadcasting college football games.[129]

Jefferson Pilot Sports began syndicated television coverage of men's basketball games in 1986 and football games in 1992, which were picked after the CFA allocated games for its national contract.[130]

In 1994, the SEC became the first conference to leave the CFA when it announced a deal with CBS to televise one game each week. CBS paid about $17 million per season for the right to show the best game of the week. The network was required to televise each team at least once per season. The Conference soon reached a deal with ESPN to broadcast games in primetime.[129]

In August 2008, the SEC announced an unprecedented 15-year television contract with CBS worth an estimated $55 million a year. This continued the previous deal that made CBS the exclusive over-the-air broadcaster of SEC sports.[31] In the same month, the league also announced another landmark television contract with ESPN worth $2.25 billion or $150 million a year for fifteen years. The ESPN deal replaced the syndicated contract and ensured that all SEC football games would be televised nationally. The deal also committed ESPN and the conference to the creation of the SEC Network, which was finally created in 2014 and allowed for a significant increase in television coverage of SEC sports. Together, these contracts helped make the SEC one of the most nationally televised and visible conferences in the country.[131]

In 2020, the SEC announced a new deal that made ESPN the sole televisor of SEC sports starting in 2024. The ten-year contract was reported to be about $300 million per year and will allow ESPN to broadcast the SEC on ABC as well as rights to the SEC Championship Game.[132]

The SEC Network is a television and multimedia network that features exclusively Southeastern Conference content through a partnership between ESPN and the SEC.[133] The network launched on August 14, 2014, with the first live football game scheduled for two weeks later between Texas A&M and South Carolina on Thursday, August 28 in Columbia, South Carolina.[134]

The network is part of a deal between the Southeastern Conference and ESPN which is a 20-year agreement, beginning in August 2014 and running through 2034. The agreement served to create and operate a new multiplatform television network and accompanying digital platform in the hope of increasing revenue for member institutions and expanding the reach of the Southeastern Conference.

The NACDA Learfield Sports Directors' Cup is an annual award given by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics to the U.S. colleges and universities with the most success in collegiate athletics.

The Capital One Cup is an award given annually to the best men's and women's Division I college athletics programs in the United States. Points are earned throughout the year based on final standings of NCAA Championships and final coaches' poll rankings.