page_title: SEC Championship Game
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: SEC Championship Game / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Relief location map of the USA (without Hawaii and Alaska). EquiDistantConicProjection&#160;: Central parallel&#160;: * N: 37.0° N Central meridian&#160;: * E: 96.0° W Standard parallels: * 1: 32.0° N * 2: 42.0° N Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Formulas for x and y: x = 50.0 + 124.03149777329222 * ((1.9694462586094064-({{{2}}}* pi / 180)) * sin(0.6010514667026994 * ({{{3}}} + 96) * pi / 180)) y = 50.0 + 1.6155950752393982 * 124.03149777329222 * 0.02613325650382181 - 1.6155950752393982 * 124.03149777329222 * (1.3236744353715044 - (1.9694462586094064-({{{2}}}* pi / 180)) * cos(0.6010514667026994 * ({{{3}}} + 96) * pi / 180))
context_page_description: The SEC Championship Game is an annual American football game that has determined the Southeastern Conference's season champion since 1992. The championship game pits the SEC West Division regular season champion against the East Division regular season champion. Since 2007, the game has typically been played on the first Saturday of December, and the game has been held in Atlanta since 1994, first at the Georgia Dome, and at Mercedes-Benz Stadium since 2017.
  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 is led by the Western Division, 16–12.
  While ten SEC members have played in the game, only six have won: Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee of the East Division, and Alabama, Auburn, and LSU of the West Division. Each of these teams has won the championship multiple times. LSU is the reigning SEC champion.
context_section_description: 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 was 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 at least 2027.
  In 2016, Alabama and Florida met in the SEC Championship Game for the ninth time in the first 25 years of the game; the record for the most times any two teams have faced each other in the championship game. At least one of those two teams has qualified for the game in 15 of 27 seasons. The only other matchup in the SEC Championship played more than twice is Georgia and LSU, who have met there four times (most recently in 2019). Alabama has faced Florida in nine of its 12 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 the final years of the Bowl Championship Series, the game was nicknamed the "national semifinal" for college football. The 2008, 2009, and 2012 games were essentially national semifinal games, as both participating teams were virtually guaranteed a berth in the BCS national championship game with a win. The 2013 game, the last held in the BCS era, 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 semifinal.
  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, posting a 5–1 record in the national semifinal and a 2–3 record in the national championship game.
caption: Blue pog.svg – East Division
  Red pog.svg – West Division
  Green pog.svg – Championship Game site
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