SEC Championship Game

The SEC Championship Game is an annual American football game that determines the Southeastern Conference's season champion. For its first 32 seasons, the championship game pitted the Eastern Division regular season champion against the Western Division regular season champion. With the SEC eliminating football divisions after the 2023 season, the game now features the top two teams in the conference standings. The game is regularly played on the first Saturday of December. The first two editions of the game were held at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama, with all subsequent games being held in Atlanta since 1994, first at the Georgia Dome, and at its replacement Mercedes-Benz Stadium since 2017.

Eleven of the sixteen current SEC members have played in the SEC Championship Game, with Kentucky, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, and Oklahoma being the exceptions. During the divisional era, the overall series was led 19–13 by the Western Division.

While eleven SEC members have played in the game, only six have won: Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, and LSU. Each of these teams has won the championship multiple times. South Carolina, Mississippi State, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas have played in the game but failed to win it.

History

The SEC was the first NCAA conference in any division to hold a football championship game that was exempt from NCAA regular-season game limits. This was made possible in 1987, when the NCAA membership approved a proposal sponsored by the Division II Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association allowing any conference with at least 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 was played at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Following the closure and subsequent demolition of the Georgia Dome in 2017, the SEC Championship Game remained in Atlanta, moving to the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium that replaced the Georgia Dome under a ten-year contract. In November 2023, the SEC signed a five-year extension with Mercedes-Benz Stadium with an additional five-year option which will get the game at the stadium until 2032.

The SEC Championship Game has been played on the first Saturday of December with two exceptions. The 2001 edition was moved to the second Saturday in December so games cancelled during the week of the September 11 attacks could be rescheduled on the first Saturday. The 2020 edition was pushed back to the third week of December as part of the adjustments in the 2020 season for the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the SEC expanding to 16 teams with the 2024 arrival of Oklahoma and Texas, it announced on June 1, 2023, that it would eliminate its football divisions at that time. Championship games from 2024 forward will feature the top two teams in the conference standings.

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. Since 2014, the SEC Championship Game winner has gone on to appear in the College Football Playoff every season, posting a 8–2 record in the national semi-final and a 4–4 record in the College Football Playoff National Championship. Two of these losses in the National Championship were to another team from the SEC, including a rematch of the 2021 SEC Championship game in the eventual National Championship.

Results

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

‡ 2020 game attendance limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results by team

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

Home/away designation

During the championship's divisional era, the team designated as the "home" team alternated between division champions. The designation went to the Eastern champion in even-numbered years and the Western champion in odd-numbered years.

After the 2020 contest, the designated "home" team is 16–13 overall in SEC championship games.

In 2009, the Western 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 West 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 Division representative wore their home jerseys because in 2011, LSU again represented the West; this happened again from 2018 to 2020 since LSU represented the West in 2019.

In the current format, the No. 1 seed is designated as the home team.

Rematches

While SEC schools played every other member of their own division during the conference's divisional era, they did not play every member of the opposite division. With the end of divisional play, each SEC member will play only eight of the 15 other teams in the conference. Thus, the SEC Championship Game is not guaranteed to be a rematch of a regular-season game. The SEC Championship game has featured a rematch of a regular-season game a total of eight times (1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2010, 2017, 2024,2025). The team which won the regular-season game is 6–3 in the rematches, the exceptions being 2001,2017, and 2025.

Common matchups

Matchups that have occurred more than once:

Selection criteria

The SEC's tiebreakers changed when they eliminated divisions in 2024. The tiebreaker is applied to any number of tied teams, and is repeated until only one team (or two in the case of teams being tied for first and second in the standings) remains.

Tie-breaker procedure

1. Head-to-head competition between the tied teams.
2. Record versus all common conference opponents among the tied teams.
3. Record against highest (best) placed common conference opponent in the conference standings, and proceeding through the conference standings among the tied teams.
4. Cumulative Conference winning percentage of all conference opponents among the tied teams .
5. Capped relative total scoring margin (see Appendix A) per SportSource Analytics versus all conference opponents among the tied teams.
6. Random draw of the tied teams.

Winner's bowl performance

Currently the SEC champion plays in the Sugar Bowl unless it has been selected to play in a College Football Playoff semi-final bowl, or if the Sugar Bowl is hosting a CFP semi-final and the SEC champion either does not qualify for the CFP or has a seeding that prevents it from appearing in the Sugar Bowl. In the SEC Championship Game era, eleven winners of the game have gone on to win the national title (outright or shared), with thirteen SEC teams winning national titles overall, including seven consecutive titles from the 2006–2012 seasons.

There are three occasions when the SEC champion advanced to the BCS or CFP but lost to another SEC team which won the national championship:

In 2011, LSU won the SEC Championship Game and advanced to the BCS National Championship Game which they lost 21–0 to fellow SEC West member Alabama.

In 2017, Georgia won the SEC Championship Game and advanced to the College Football Playoff, defeating Oklahoma in the semifinal and advancing to the CFP final game, which they lost 26–23 in overtime to SEC member Alabama.

In 2021, Alabama won the SEC Championship game and advanced to the College Football Playoff, defeating Cincinnati in the semifinal and advancing to the CFP final game, which they lost 33–18 to Georgia in a rematch of the SEC title game. It was the 1st time that the loser of the conference championship won the national championship game in the same season.

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

Runners'-up bowl performance

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

Game records

See also

• List of NCAA Division I FBS conference championship games

Footnotes

Notes