SEC Championship Game

Updated on Oct 26, 2023

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Sport Football Current location Atlanta, Georgia Last contest 2016		Current stadium Mercedes-Benz Stadium Played 1992–present

Conference Southeastern Conference

The SEC Championship Game (officially The SEC Championship on CBS presented by Dr Pepper for broadcast and sponsorship purposes) is an annual American football game that has determined the Southeastern Conference's season champion since 1992. The championship game pits the SEC Western Division regular season champion against the Eastern Division regular season champion. It is typically played on the first Saturday of December.

Ten of the fourteen current SEC members have played in the SEC Championship Game. Kentucky and Vanderbilt have yet to reach the game from the East, while Ole Miss and Texas A&M have yet to reach the game from the West. The overall series between both divisions is led by the Western Division, 14–11.

While ten SEC members have played in the game, only six have won: Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee of the Eastern Division, and Alabama, Auburn, and LSU of the Western Division. Each of these teams has won the championship multiple times. Alabama is the current SEC champion.

The SEC Championship Game has been aired on CBS since 2001; the current broadcast team is Verne Lundquist as the play-by-play announcer, Gary Danielson as the color analyst, and Allie LaForce as the sideline reporter. Since 2007, the game is held the first Saturday of December at 4:00 PM Eastern.

History

The SEC was the first NCAA conference in any division to hold a football championship game that was exempt from NCAA limits on regular-season contests. Such a game was made possible by two separate developments. The first came in 1987, when the NCAA membership approved a proposal sponsored by the Division II Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association that allowed any conference with 12 football members to split into divisions and stage a championship game between the divisional winners. The SEC took advantage of this rule by adding the University of Arkansas and the University of South Carolina in 1992, bringing the conference membership to 12, and splitting into two football divisions. The format has since been adopted by other conferences to decide their football champion (the first being the Big 12 in 1996).

The first two SEC Championship Games were held at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama. From 1994 until 2016, the game has been played at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. With the Georgia Dome scheduled to be demolished after the 2016 season, the SEC chose to keep the title game in Atlanta at the Georgia Dome's replacement, Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The game will be played at the new stadium through 2027.

In 2016, Alabama and Florida met in the SEC Championship Game for the ninth time in the twenty-five year history of the game, the record for the most times any two teams have faced each other in the championship game. And at least one of those two teams has qualified for the game in 14 of 25 seasons. The only other matchup in the SEC Championship played more than twice is Georgia and LSU, which has been played three times. Alabama has faced Florida in nine of their eleven SEC Championship Game appearances. In addition, the 2009 game marked the second consecutive year that the No. 1 (Florida) and No. 2 (Alabama) ranked teams in the AP Poll met in the SEC Championship game. 2009 was the first time any conference championship game had featured two undefeated teams. Alabama won 32–13 and earned a berth in the 2010 BCS National Championship Game, which it went on to win as well.

Auburn and Missouri met in the 2013 SEC Championship Game (in Missouri's 2nd year in the SEC). Auburn won the game 59–42, breaking the previous record of 56 points for most points scored by a single team in the SEC Championship Game (previously set by Auburn in 2010).

In recent years, the game has been nicknamed the "national semi-final" for college football. The 2008, 2009, and 2012 games were essentially national semi-final games, as both participating teams were virtually guaranteed a berth in the BCS national championship game with a win. The 2013 game was not thought of as such at the time of the game, but results of other games later that day meant that it effectively was such a semi-final.

Between 2006 and 2013 the winner of the SEC Championship Game went on to play in the BCS National Championship Game eight straight years, posting a 6-2 record in the game. Since 2014, the SEC Championship Game winner has gone on to appear in the College Football Playoff every season.

Results

Results from all SEC Championship games that have been played. Rankings are from the AP Poll.

Results by team

Kentucky, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, and Vanderbilt have yet to make an appearance in an SEC Championship Game.

Home/away designation

The team designated as the "home" team alternates between division champions. The designation goes to the Eastern champion in even-numbered years and the Western champion in odd-numbered years.

As of the 2016 contest, the designated "home" team is 15–10 overall in SEC championship games.

In 2009, the Western division champion, Alabama, was the home team, ending a streak where the SEC Western team had worn white jerseys in nine consecutive SEC Championship Games (2000–2008). This was because LSU had represented the Western division in the previous four seasons that the Western division champion was the "home" team, and LSU traditionally chooses to wear white jerseys for home games. Additionally, for the next three years (2010–2012), the Eastern representative wore their home jerseys because in 2011, LSU again represented the Western division.

Rematches

The SEC Championship game has featured a rematch of a regular season game a total of six times (1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2010). The team which won the regular season game is 5–1 in the rematches, the lone exception being in 2001 when LSU defeated Tennessee in the championship game after losing to them in the regular season.

Common matchups

Matchups that have occurred more than once:

Selection criteria

Division standings are based on each team's overall conference record. The SEC Commissioner's Regulations requires each football team play all eight conference games in a season in order to be eligible to compete for a divisional title and play in the SEC Championship Game. Often, two or more teams tie for the best record in their division and each team is recognized as a divisional co-champion. However, tiebreakers are used to determine who will represent the division in the championship game.

Two-team tie-breaker procedure

Head-to-head competition between the two tied teams.
Records of the tied teams within the division.
Records against the team within the division with the best overall (divisional and non-divisional) conference record and proceeding through the division. Multiple ties within the division will be broken from first to last.
Complete record vs. all non-divisional opponents.
Complete record vs. all common non-divisional teams if there be any.
Record vs. common non-divisional opponent (if there be any) with the best overall conference (divisional and non-divisional) record and proceeding through other common non-divisional teams based on their order of finish within their division.
Best cumulative conference winning percentage of non-divisional opponents
Coin flip of the tied teams

NOTE: Although all division rivals meet during the season and NCAA overtime is played in case of a tie game, the SEC has provisions in case a game ends in a tie under NCAA Rule 3-3-3 (c) and (d), Suspending the Game, or if the two tied teams did not play an official game because of weather. As such, SEC rules still contain the remaining procedures if those circumstances were to happen.

Three or more-team procedure

(Once the tie has been reduced to two teams, go to the two-team tie-breaker format.)

Combined head-to-head record among the tied teams.
Record of the tied teams within the division.
Records against the team within the division with the best overall (divisional and non-divisional) Conference record and proceeding through the division. Multiple ties within the division will be broken from first to last.
Complete record vs. non-division teams.
Complete record vs. all common non-divisional teams.
Record vs. common non-divisional team with the best overall Conference (divisional and non-divisional) record and proceeding through other common non-divisional teams based on their order of finish within their division.
Best cumulative Conference winning percentage of non-divisional opponents (Note: If two teams' non-divisional opponents have the same cumulative record, then the two-team tiebreaker procedures apply. If four teams are tied, and three teams' non-divisional opponents have the same cumulative record, the three-team tiebreaker procedures will be used beginning with #1
Coin flip of the tied teams with the team with the odd result being the representative (Example: If there are two teams with tails and one team with heads, the team with heads is the representative)

Winner's bowl performance

Currently the SEC champion plays in the Sugar Bowl unless they have been selected to play in a College Football Playoff semi-final bowl. In the SEC Championship Game era, ten winners of the game have gone on to win the national title (outright or shared), with eleven SEC teams winning national titles overall, including seven consecutive titles from the 2006–2012 seasons. In 2011 LSU won the SEC Championship Game and advanced to the BCS National Championship Game which they lost 21–0 to fellow SEC member Alabama.

Rankings are from the AP Poll at the time the game was played.

Runner up's bowl performance