The Southeastern Conference (SEC) has always been known for its prestige in athletics, but a lot of us don’t know when or how the SEC started. The SEC was established in December of 1932 and included 13 original members: University of Alabama, Auburn University, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Kentucky, Louisiana-State University (LSU), University of Mississippi (“Ole Miss”), Mississippi State University, University of Tennessee, Vanderbilt University, University of the South (Sewanee), Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), and Tulane University. Of these 13 the first 10 are still current members of the SEC.

Throughout the years the SEC has gone through expansions and teams leaving the conference. Sewanee was the first to leave when in 1940 when they decided to lessen their emphasis on varsity sports and concentrate on academics. In 1964 Georgia Tech left, and ended up settling in the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1978. Tulane left the SEC in 1966, and contributed to the founding of Conference-USA. In the year 1991 the SEC expanded for the first time adding the University of Arkansas and University of South Carolina to their ranks. Another major thing that came out of the 1991 expansion was the creation of an East and West conference.

The only other time members have been added to the conference was in the fall of 2011 when the SEC announced that, effective July 1, 2012, Texas A&M University and Missouri will become full members of the conference. The SEC’s strong history and tradition of excellence is displayed by how only four teams have been added to the conference in 80 years.

In 1992 the SEC set a new standard for football by becoming the first conference to receive permission from the NCAA to sponsor an annual conference title game.

The SEC is also known for its recent dominance in football and baseball. Most recently the SEC won its sixth straight BCS Title (football), and won its third straight College Baseball World Series.

Since its founding the SEC has won 185 team NCAA championships. When you average that out, it comes to approximately 2.3 NCAA titles per year. This is an astounding statistic considering the number of NCAA Division-1 conferences there are. Simply put, the SEC has been the most dominant conference of the last 20 years, winning an average of 8.65 NCAA titles per year. 

The SEC is currently under the leadership of Michael Slive, the conference’s seventh commissioner, who has been in office since 2002. Conference headquarters is located in Birmingham, Ala. and is considered one of the most successful conferences in the country. During 2010-11 fiscal year the SEC brought in and distributed over $220 million in revenue. That was a new conference record, and the forecast is that revenue will continue to climb over the next 10-20 years.

The Southeastern Conference has a long and storied history of excellence in sports, and the future seems to get brighter every year.