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 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. 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, and his SEC debut against Ole Miss the following week on September 30 (the day after Page's death
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. 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 DateFormat = yyyy ImageSize = width:1000 height:auto barincrement:20 Period = from:1932 till:2030 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:5 left:5 bottom:40 top:5 Colors = id:line value:red id:bg value:white id:Full value:rgb(0.742,0.727,0.852) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports id:FullxF value:rgb(0.551,0.824,0.777) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports except for football id:AssocF value:rgb(0.98,0.5,0.445) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member for football only id:AssocOS value:rgb(0.5,0.691,0.824) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in some sports, but not all (consider identifying in legend or a footnote) id:OtherC1 value:rgb(0.996,0.996,0.699) # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference id:OtherC2 value:rgb(0.988,0.703,0.383) # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference where OtherC1 has already been used, to distinguish the two id:Ind value:rgb(0.83,0.83,0.83) PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s bar:1 color:Full from:1932 till:1940 text:
Sewanee (1932–1940) bar:1 shift:(35) color:OtherC1 from:1940 till:1962 text:
Independent bar:1 color:OtherC2 from:1962 till:2012 text:
SCAC bar:1 color:OtherC1 from:2012 till:end text:
SAA bar:2 color:Full from:1932 till:1964 text:
Georgia Tech (1932–1964) bar:2 color:OtherC1 from:1964 till:1975 text:
Independent bar:2 color:OtherC2 from:1975 till:1978 text:
Metro bar:2 shift:(10) color:OtherC1 from:1978 till:end text:
ACC bar:3 color:Full from:1932 till:1966 text:
Tulane (1932–1966) bar:3 color:OtherC1 from:1966 till:1975 text:
Independent bar:3 color:OtherC2 from:1975 till:1995 text:
Metro bar:3 color:OtherC1 from:1995 till:2014 text:
C-USA bar:3 color:OtherC2 from:2014 till:end text:
AAC bar:4 color:Full from:1932 till:end text:
Alabama (1932–present) bar:5 color:Full from:1932 till:end text:
Auburn (1932–present) bar:6 color:Full from:1932 till:end text:
Florida (1932–present) bar:7 color:Full from:1932 till:end text:
Georgia (1932–present) bar:8 color:Full from:1932 till:end text:
Kentucky (1932–present) bar:9 color:Full from:1932 till:end text:
LSU (1932–present) bar:10 color:Full from:1932 till:end text:
Mississippi (1932–present) bar:11 color:Full from:1932 till:end text:
Mississippi State (1932–present) bar:12 color:Full from:1932 till:end text:
Tennessee (1932–present) bar:13 color:Full from:1932 till:end text:
Vanderbilt (1932–present) bar:14 color:Full from:1992 till:end text:
Arkansas (1991–present) bar:14 color:OtherC1 from:1932 till:1991 text:
SWC bar:14 color:FullxF from:1991 till:1992 bar:15 color:Full from:1992 till:end text:
South Carolina (1991–present) bar:15 color:OtherC1 from:1932 till:1953 text:
Southern bar:15 color:OtherC2 from:1953 till:1972 text:
ACC bar:15 color:OtherC1 from:1972 till:1983 text:
Independent bar:15 color:OtherC2 from:1983 till:1991 text:
Metro bar:15 color:FullxF from:1991 till:1992 bar:16 color:Full from:2012 till:end text:
Texas A&M (2012–present) bar:16 color:OtherC1 from:1932 till:1996 text:
SWC bar:16 color:OtherC2 from:1996 till:2012 text:
Big 12 bar:17 color:Full from:2012 till:end text:
Missouri (2012–present) bar:17 color:OtherC1 from:1932 till:1996 text:
Big Eight bar:17 color:OtherC2 from:1996 till:2012 text:
Big 12 bar:18 color:Full from:2024 till:end shift:(-63) text:
Oklahoma (2024–present) bar:18 color:OtherC1 from:1932 till:1996 text:
Big Eight bar:18 color:OtherC2 from:1996 till:2024 text:
Big 12 bar:19 color:Full from:2024 till:end shift:(-44) text:
Texas (2024–present) bar:19 color:OtherC1 from:1932 till:1996 text:
SWC bar:19 color:OtherC2 from:1996 till:2024 text:
Big 12 ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:5 start:1950 TextData = fontsize:M textcolor:black pos:(0,20) tabs:(400-center) text:^"Southeastern Conference membership history" • > If the chart uses more than one bar color, add a legend by selecting the appropriate fields from the following six options (use only the colors that are used in the graphic.) Leave a blank line after the end of the timeline, then add a line with the selected values from the list, separated by a space. ==Commissioners==