The History of the Southeastern Conference

Even though the Southeastern Conference didnt become reality until 1933, its roots go back into the late 1800s, when football was barley a blip on the athletic radar screen, especially in the South.

With the game just having been introduced on most the campuses which would eventually form the alliance, most Southern schools were small and baseball was usually the sport of choice.

On December 22, 1894, on the suggestion of Dr.

William Dudley, a professor of chemistry at Vanderbilt, faculty representatives from seven schools gathered in Atlanta for an informal meeting to discuss the organization of an association to establish common rules, settle disputes and provide general regulation and control of collegiate athletics.

The Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (1894-1922) was the first of its kind in the nation, followed by the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives, which would evolve into the Big Ten Conference.

The schools were Alabama, Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now known as Auburn), Georgia, Georgia School of Technology, North Carolina, University of the South (Sewanee), and Vanderbilt.

With an open membership, another 19 schools joined within a year and would be considered charter members.

By 1928, the roster included 32 schools, stretching the association from Maryland to Texas.

According to Melvin Henry Gruensfelder, who wrote the thesis A History of the Origin and Development of the Southeastern Conference at the University of Illinois in 1964, a primary concern of the organization was to correct some of the evils of baseball.

A key regulation was the requirement for a transfer student to remain in residence for one year before he could participate in an intercollegiate contest.

It was enacted in 1894 and known as the migratory law.

Many of the original staples still exist in some form today, like participation limited to a time period of five years and eligibility requirements.

Additionally, may of the control problems the SIAA faced in its early years the National Collegiate Athletic Association would likewise contend with a half-century later, in that there was a clear division of membership in how best to proceed (especially larger schools vs.

smaller schools).

In 1899, the University of the South (from Sewanee, Tennessee), and a future, albeit brief, member of the SEC, pulled off an amazing accomplishment when it won five games in six days on the road against LSU, Ole Miss, Texas, Texas A&M and Tulane by a combined score of 91-0.

Sewanee had already defeated Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Tennessee, and went on to defeat Auburn, which was the only opponent to score, 11-10, and North Carolina before declaring itself the Southern football champion.

No one argued the point.

In 1904, the first full-time football coaches, including Mike Donahue at Auburn, John Heisman at Georgia Tech, and Vanderbilts Dan McGugin, escalated the sports growing importance in the region, and pretty soon other schools were looking for ways compensate, especially to keep up with Vanderbilt.

Chargers of ringers and professionalism became so common that a meeting of the association was called in mid-season of 1907 for a hurried hearing regarding in the temporary suspension of one school, Gruensfelder wrote.

Bad feeling arising from other charges caused the ending of one intercollegiate rivalry and the de-emphasis of others.

The rivalry, of course, was Alabama-Auburn, now possibly the most intense in the nation.

He continued: The bad feeling, compounded by efforts to field winning teams, almost destroyed the game in the South.

The feeling of distrust was most difficult to overcome and was still evident years later.

At the time, football was essentially a hybrid of rugby and soccer, only incredibly brutal.

There was no neutral zone between teams at the line of scrimmage and few limits to what linemen could do to opposing players, or for that matter their own players as ball carriers could be picked up and thrown over the line.

Gang tackling was the norm and, though extremely dangerous, most teams utilized the Flying Wedge formation in which teammates would link together sometimes using a special belt equipped with handles to form a v and charge into the opposition.

In 1905 alone, college football was credited with 18 deaths and 149 serious injuries.

With the game at a crossroad and close to being banned, President Theodore Roosevelt, himself a fan of the sport, stepped in and during two White House conferences with collegiate athletic leaders made it clear that football would either be reformed or abolished.

In December of that year, Chancellor Henry M.

MacCracken of New York University headed a meeting of 13 schools to initiate changes.

It also led to the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS), founded by 62 members.

Within four years, it morphed into both a much stronger organization and different name, and thus the NCAA was born.

In 1915, in part because the larger and smaller schools were split on freshmen eligibility, two new alliances were formed within the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, with members vowing not to play opponents that didnt follow their regulations.

Comprising the Athletic Conference of Southern States were Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Members of the Southern Athletic Conference were Alabama Institute of Technology, Clemson, Georgia School of Technology, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi A&M and Tennessee.

Perhaps the most famous game of the time period occurred in 1916, when Georgia Tech routed Cumberland College 220-0.

With his team up by more than 100 points at halftime, Heisman told his players: Be careful of that team from Cumberland.

Theres no telling what they have up their sleeves.

Georgia Tech went 9-0 and won the first of its four national championships in 1917, but declined a trip to the Rose Bowl so that many players could enlist in the military during World War I.

With a record of 102-29-7, Heisman had to leave the school in 1919 due to a divorce settlement stipulating that he would not live in the same city as his ex-wife.

She chose Atlanta.

He was succeeded by William Alexander, who went 134-95-15 and was the first coach to take teams to the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Cotton bowls.

Note: Georgia Tech won its second national championship in 1928 after defeating California 8-7 in the Rose Bowl.

The game is known "Wrong Way Riegels," when Cals Roy Riegels picked up a fumble and ran toward his own goal-line, only to be eventually tackled by his teammates.

When Cal had to punt, Tech blocked it for a safety, earning what would be the game-winning points.

It took five years, but after World War I the issue of freshman eligibility finally split the association, which by 1920 had grown to 30 schools.

Eight joined the Athletic Conference of Southern States to form the Southern Intercollegiate Conference, but still cooperated and competed with association schools after they finally yielded and adopted the freshmen rule.

However, at a meeting at Gainesville, Florida, on December 12-13 of that year, the larger schools formed a completely new league.

Making up the Southern Conference were Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi State, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Tennessee, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Washington & Lee.

Florida, Louisiana State, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tulane, Vanderbilt and Virginia Military, while Sewanee and Duke became members in 1923 and 1928, respectively.

This new association, with Georgias S.V.

Sanford serving as president, coincided with the growth of football, placing it among the most popular of spectator sports, thus increasing the role of the NCAA (though few Southern schools belonged at the time).

"It is the purpose and function of this conference to promote intercollegiate athletics in every form, to keep them in proper bounds by making them an incidental and not the principal feature of intercollegiate and university life, and to regulate them by wise and prudent measures in order that they may improve the physical condition, strengthen the moral fiber of students and form a constituent part of that education for which universities and colleges were established and are maintained.

Again there were some problems.

For example, the executive committee served merely as a court in matters of enforcement, so there was no investigatory process to discover rule-breakers.

Because membership was so large, growing to 23 schools by 1928 despite an original cap of 16, and each deserved an opportunity to be heard on every matter, meetings were excessively long and the travel cumbersome.

One of the favorable issues the new conference faced was after Alabama became the first Southern school invited to play in the Rose Bowl in 1925.

Conference rules did not permit any games to be played after the first Saturday following Thanksgiving.

By a unanimous vote the rule was suspended, and four more invitations to conference teams were received before 1932.

But the incredibly large conference had no means for naming an annual football or baseball champion, while championship events were held in basketball, track & field, cross country, tennis, boxing and wrestling, golf, and swimming.

Other issues divided the membership, from academic requirements to recruiting and scholarships, which resulted in sharp differences.

The filming of practices and games, even for scouting or instruction purposes, was one of the most hotly debated subjects, and in 1931 it was actually outlawed along with radio broadcasts of football games, while photographers were banned from sidelines.

During a meeting in Knoxville, Tenn., in December 1932, the decision was made to split the Southern Conference into two geographical entities.

The 10 coastal schools east of the Appalachian Mountains kept the Southern Conference name and continued to expand until eventually going through another separation in 1953.

Meanwhile, 13 schools, determined to avoid the problems of the previous organizations, formed the Southeastern Conference.

In a departure from the previous associations, the president of each school became the primary representative to the conference (with the aim to having athletics to better serve the overall educational aims of each institution), and a new constitution and by-laws were quickly adopted.

Kentuckys president Frank McVey was elected the first SEC president, followed by Floridas Dr.

John Tigert.

The Southeastern Conference is organized to form a more compact group of institutions with similar education ideals and regulations in order that they by joint action increase their ability to render the services for which they were founded and for which they are maintained, by making athletics a part of the education plan and by making them subservient to the great aims and objects of education and placing them under the same administrative control.

The conference proposes to accomplish this end by promoting mutual trust and friendly relations between members; by controlling athletic competition and keeping such competition within the bounds of an educational activity; by promoting clean sportsmanship; and by developing public appreciation of the educational, rather than the commercial, values in intercollegiate sports.

McVey held his first informal meeting with school presidents in Birmingham, Ala., on February 16, 1933, with the first full meeting called to order in Atlanta on February 27.

During the heart of the Great Depression, the leagues inaugural championship was a basketball tournament in Atlanta, with Kentucky defeating Mississippi State 46-27 for the title.

The LSU mens track team, which was coached by Bernie Moore, won the conferences first national championship, defeating Southern California 58-54 at the national meet in Chicago.

In football, Alabama finished atop the SEC standings (5-0-1, 7-1-1 overall) just ahead of LSU (3-0-2, 7-0-3).

With rule changes designed to encourage more passing, the attendance decline of the previous two years reversed, and the sport continued to grow in popularity.

One of the SECs first controversial decisions was to allow student-athletes to be eligible for normal student aid for tuition, books, board and room resulting in outcry in the media and from other schools, but they were eventually won over.

Influenced by the depression, when many athletics had to leave school in order to support themselves, grant-in-aid for athletics was enacted in 1935.

This plan has now been in effect a year and I am convinced that it has elevated intercollegiate athletics to a higher plane, and in general has corrected the evils and problems which previously had made falsifiers out of many of the athletes, Tulanes Dr.

Wilbur Smith wrote in his report to the NCAA in 1936.

In 1938, the Southern Conference adopted its own grant-in-aid policy.

Meanwhile, bowl games other than the Rose Bowl (which wouldnt sign an affiliation agreement with the Pac-10 and Big Ten conferences until 1946) began to emerge.

Tulane was allowed to play in the first Sugar Bowl in 1935, followed by LSU the subsequent three seasons.

An affiliation agreement to have an SEC team annually selected was debated and initially turned down.

The Orange Bowl, which played its first game in 1933, invited Ole Miss in 1936, followed by Mississippi State, Auburn, Tennessee and Georgia Tech in the following years, all of which still had to receive permission from the conference.

That same year, all SEC schools had finally, and formally, joined the NCAA, with Alabama and Kentucky the final two holdouts.

In 1934, the conference negotiated a contract for a game of the week broadcast, with A.J.

Norris Hill Company the sponsor, but local broadcasts of games were still prohibited.

However, when the financial gain exceeded expectations, the ban was lifted with schools allowed to negotiate their own contracts.

Meanwhile, the SEC recognized the need for recruiting protocols and focused on establishing controls.

In 1939, the NCAA adopted its famous Article III regarding recruiting and subsidizing, and mandated that all schools adhere as a condition for membership.

It authorized some recognition of the athlete in the granting of aid according to need, but fell short of what the SEC had approved.

It marked a new era of regulation and enforcement for the parent organization, with the SEC adjusting its regulations to conform.

In 1939, at the suggestion Vanderbilt Chancellor O.C.

Carmichael, the SEC formed a committee to study the prospect of having a full-time commissioner to enforce conference rules and regulations, investigate alleged violations, and act as a center of communications between athletic departments.

Martin Sennett Conner, a prominent attorney in Jackson, Miss.

and former governor of that state, was appointed on August 20, 1940.

We assume our duties, when men are shaken with doubt and with fear, and many are wondering if our very civilization is about to crumble, Conner said when he was inaugurated as governor on January 19, 1932, at the age of 41.

At the time, Mississippi had a bankrupt treasury and a $13 million deficit.

After making it one of the first states to impose a sales tax, Mississippi had accumulated a treasury surplus by the time he left office in 1936.

Conner was given an annual salary of $7,500 with a matching expense allowance.

To pay for it, each school was to pay one-half of one percent of its gross football receipts (which was quickly increased to one percent).

The first change in membership came in 1940, when Sewanee, which had not enjoyed the growth of the other schools and had yet to win an SEC football game, left the conference.

A small liberal arts college simply cannot compete in football with large universities, the letter of resignation stated.

Equal competition in other sports is very difficult.

Though the SEC regretted the loss, it did not consider a replacement and aimed to keep its numbers low.

As the country entered World War II, Conner established his office in Jackson and set forth in making sure conference regulations were carried out uniformly.

One was that an athlete receiving student aid could work at a job paying no more than $10 per month a term.

Normal pay could be received during holiday and vacation periods.

When the SECs annual meeting in 1941 was held in Lexington, Ky., just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, numerous resolutions were passed, including the following by the presidents and faculty chairmen: The Southeastern Conference has assembled at the most critical period in American history.

The days of the American Revolution were not so ominous.

The conflict which resulted in the War Between the States did not constitute such a critical moment in our history.

The First World War in 1917 was far less serious than the present crisis which is upon us.

We have met today not merely to consider the minor problems of football, basketball, and other athletic sports but to consider seriously how colleges and universities can meet the issue of national defense and make their contributions in the struggle for out existence.

With many eligibility regulations lifted and/or eventually suspended (entrance requirements, rule on transfers, participation rules and the academic progress requirement), competition continued through the early stages of the war, though large crowds were banned on the West Coast, resulting in the Rose Bowl temporarily relocating to Durham, N.C.

(where Oregon State defeated Duke 20-16 before 65,000 fans).

In 1943, seven SEC football teams cancelled their seasons.

Vanderbilt had an informal schedule, LSU and Georgia played with freshmen and transfers, and Georgia Tech and Tulane competed with Navy players.

The following season, 11 schools utilized schedules of seven to 10 games.

Though the conference did not suspend business, the commissioner was reduced to part-time status, with reduced pay.

Instead, planning meetings were held to prepare for the post-war years, studying, and in many cases overhauling, everything from recruiting to administration.

Among the changes, the $10 per month job was abolished (in favor of a $10 monthly grant), but creating a balanced, rotating schedule in football was rejected.

In 1946, the SEC established its own association of officials.

Regulations regarding returning veterans proved to be tricky and confusing, and due to the various categories the commissioner often had to go on a case-by-case basis.

When the conference passed a rule that a veteran could only compete after returning to his pre-service college within one year form the date of his discharge, it was met by protest.

At Auburns request a hearing was heard, with the most vocal objections over the stipulation that a veteran had to return to his original college (veterans organizations felt that a veteran should be able to choose any school he desired), and the rule was repealed.

With the innovative T-formation, devised by Stanfords Clark Shaughnessy, followed by the split-T and the wing-T, player substitutions (to speed up the game and reduce injuries), along with television, footballs growth was unprecedented in the years following World War II.

Helping usher in the new era was Smith, who was president of the NCAA, and Conner, a member of its executive committee.

However, Smith resigned in 1946 due to personal reasons and Conner was no longer able to continue on the committee or as SEC commissioner due to health issues, leaving a temporary void in conference representation on the national level.

Coinciding with their departures, the NCAA began a lengthy period of adjustment and transition.

In 1947, the NCAA adopted the self-policing Sanity Code regarding recruiting and subsidizing.

It permitted aid for tuition and fees, but not room and board.

The SEC and Southwest Conference opposed the new rule, along with a recruiting regulation that prohibited off-campus contact.

The Sanity Code was passed at the NCAA convention, but the recruiting regulation did not.

While the SEC left the convention unsatisfied, it did get more representation with Vanderbilt Dean C.M.

Sarratt and Alabama Dean Albert Moore elected to the council, with Moore becoming the first SEC representative to serve as NCAA president in 1953.

Tennessee Dean N.W.

Dougherty was elected to the executive committee in 1948, and W.A.

Alexander of Georgia Tech added to the inspections and enforcement committee.

In an interview with Gruensfelder, Dougherty humorously said: The NCAA was the biggest thing to happen to the conference.

Dougherty stepped in as acting commissioner after Conner stepped down, until former LSU coach Moore was named the second full-time commissioner in 1948, the same year Kentucky won the SECs first national basketball championship.

One of Moores first moves was to move his offices to Birmingham, a central location within the conference that still serves as SEC headquarters.

He also created an information bureau which would disseminate weekly releases, and authorized annual publication of a records book and season statistics.

In 1949, with the conference taking in 25 percent of its assessment on bowl game receipts, the SEC essentially became self-sufficient, and in 1953 distributed $120,000 to its members as excess funds, with gate receipts exceeding expenditures long before the first television contract was signed.

At the suggestion of the NCAA, the SEC voted in 1951 to regulate the length of the football season, along with preseason and spring practices (meanwhile, the Southern Conference banned teams from playing in bowl games and limited rosters to 40 players for conference games.

When Clemson and Maryland accepted bowl bids, they were declared ineligible for the conference championship.

Two years later, seven of the larger schools broke off to form the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Otherwise, the biggest areas of concern during the time period had to do with gambling and bribery.

In addition to the numerous proposals the schools considered, reforms were also passed by federal and state legislatures.

Meanwhile, the first televised game in the Deep South was played in 1951, between Alabama and Tennessee.

When the NCAA Council recommended that any schools unable to conform to the Sanity Code be suspended, membership didnt follow suit, signaling a departure in the organizations power structure.

Due to concerns that it was creating more inequality in athletics, Kentucky faculty chairman A.D.

Kirwan led the debate to repeal the Sanity Code that had been in effect for only three years.

As a result, the NCAA was again an advisory board, but the movement toward having national control of recruiting standards and enforcement was on.

The restrictions in the Sanity Code were such that the majority of institutions felt they couldn't live by it, Bradley University director of athletics Arthur J.

Bergstrom said.

In fact, it got to the point where a great many schools, especially in the South and Southeast, said that if the code was adopted, they would withdraw their membership from the NCAA.

In 1952, after a re-organization increased the decision-making power to the elected council instead of the appointed executive committee, the NCAA strengthened its investigative arm with stricter penalties.

Coinciding with rapid growth of membership, not to mention television, the NCAA consolidated its ability to govern both large and small schools, and handle problems not limited to a single school or region.

While the council approved a 12-point code in August 1951 that picked up where the Sanity Code left off, a nine-member Membership Committee composed of the NCAA president and the eight district vice-presidents was charged with considering complaints filed against member schools.

A Committee on Infractions was established in 1954 to replace the Membership Committee, and an assistant to NCAA Executive Director Walter Byers was hired to help administer the process.

In 1956, that position was assumed by Bergstrom.

The SEC was opposed to the NCAAs return to enforcement, but fully cooperated.

One of the first major cases occurred in 1952 when Kentucky, coming off a severe point-shaving scandal, requested an investigation, which found that ineligible basketball players had participated in NCAA events over several years.

Both the NCAA and SEC penalized the school, and Kentucky canceled its season.

At the time, former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent W.A.

Collier was the SECs investigator, a position he held for 12 years.

Additionally, from 1954 to 1961, the conference was represented on the NCAA Infractions Committee by Sarratt and Kirwan.

In 1953, Moore reported that an average of 40 to 50 percent of freshmen athletes who had participated the year before did not return to school.

In 1954, the average loss was 46 percent, and 30 percent of the students authorized grants didnt show up for their first year.

The conference responded by authorizing new standards raising the levels of grants, and the return rates improved immediately.

A year later, the NCAA council appointed a committee to study all aspects of recruiting.

One of the changes that came out it, three years later, was the rule allowing a school to pay for one official visit by a recruit to the campus (putting the responsibility on the schools and curbing potential alumni activities).

Though initially opposed by many, the national letter of intent became reality in 1963 and a year later most conferences had established entrance requirements.

Neither change was legislated at the NCAA level, rather agreed to by the conferences.

It wasnt until 1956 that the SEC attempted to adopt a round-robin schedule featuring a set number of traditional and rotating games, only to be objected by nearly every school.

Instead, a seven-game schedule was adopted.

From 1948 to 1964, the SEC considered inviting Miami and Houston to join the conference, but never did in part because of the disagreements over a rotating football schedule.

Meanwhile, the conferences proficiency on the field was reaching new heights.

In 1959, for example, four teams finished ranked in the Top 10: Ole Miss (2), LSU (3), Georgia (5), and Alabama (10).

Two other important developments occurred under Moores watch.

In 1963, women were allowed to participate in conference competition with men in swimming and tennis.

On June 1, 1964, at the encouragement of football coach Bobby Dodd, Georgia Tech left the conference.

Dodd, a former Tennessee player who led the Yellow Jackets to the SEC championship in 1951 and 1952 (and named the 1952 national champions by two rating systems and the International News Service before it merged with United Press in 1958), believed that Tech could become a successful independent similar to Notre Dame, and disagreed with the SECs decision to limit scholarships before the NCAA mandated restrictions.

Perhaps fittingly, Georgia Techs final conference game was a 14-3 victory against rival Georgia.

The departure left the conference unbalanced, but only for two years.

Sweeping cutbacks by Tulane president Rufus Harris beginning in 1951 left the Green Wave unable to effectively compete, with as few as 38 players on the football team one season.

On June 1, 1966, Tulane withdrew from the SEC for what many thought was an effort to play a national schedule as well.

That wasnt it at all, Rix Yard, Tulanes athletic director at the time, told the Times-Picayune years later.

The purpose was to lighten the schedule.

We had to have some relief on the field.

Those were tough days.

Remember we had an 0-10 season in 1962.

I remember going to Bernie Moore and pleading to allow us to reduce our schedule.

He wouldn't allow it.

(Note: Things got much worse for Tulane before they got better.

In 1983, graduate assistant Bob Davie was caught spying on the practices of Mississippi State, Tulanes first opponent that season.

The following year, assistant, coach Wally English wanted his son, Jon, taking snaps instead of Bubby Brister, even though he had already played at five schools and been ruled ineligible.

English sued the NCAA and the school, and with his son at quarterback Tulane upset No.

9 Florida State, 34-28.

He subsequently lost the lawsuit, the game was forfeited, and soon after a point-shaving scandal involving the basketball team was uncovered.

After Tulane hired Mack Brown, who would coach Texas to the 2005 national championship, to replace English, a credit-card scandal involving football players was also unearthed.

A 14-person committee reviewed the program for months and voted the night before the Southern Miss game in 1985 whether or not to drop the sport.

The vote was a tie.

A week later, before the season-ending game with LSU, another vote was taken, and Tulane football survived by one vote).

Although there was frequent talk of a Southern Ivy League being formed, consisting of schools like Duke, Rice, Southern Methodist, Tulane and Vanderbilt, it never materialized.

When Moore retired as commissioner on April 1, 1966, he was succeeded by Alabama native A.M.

Tonto Coleman (1966-72), who had ironically worked at Georgia Tech for 15 yards and was known for his wide grins and keen sense of humor.

It was under Coleman that an SEC school admitted its first black athlete, Kentucky football player Nat Northington in 1966, after Syracuses Ernie Davis became the first black player to win the Heisman Trophy in 1961 and was followed by Southern Californias Mike Garrett in 1965.

In 1971, Dr.

Earl Ramer of Tennessee became the second SEC representative to be named NCAA president.

With Colemans retirement, Dr.

H.

Boyd McWhorter, the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Georgia and league secretary for approximately five years, became the SECs fourth commissioner in 1972.

Not only did he make the formal agreement for the conference football champion to automatically receive an invitation to play in the Sugar Bowl, but the SEC Mens Basketball Tournament was reinstated in 1979 after being discontinued in 1952.

Additionally, the first conference championships were held in womens basketball, tennis and volleyball, and the SEC signed an agreement with Turner Broadcasting Systems to show a football Game of the Week beginning in 1984, which was also when womens sports came under the auspice of the SEC.

To give an idea of the proportional growth the league experienced during his tenure, during McWhorters first year the SEC distributed $1.57 million to its 10 schools.

Fourteen years later, in 1986, it was $15 million.

Growth continued under the direction of Dr.

Harvey Schiller, who became commissioner on Sept.

15, 1986.

The Air Force colonel and former faculty chair at the U.S.

Air Force Academy left in 1989 and later joined Turner Broadcasting to head all sports programming on TBS and TNT, in addition to serving as president of the NHL Atlanta Thrashers and World Championship Wrestling, director of the U.S.

Olympic Committee, and CEO of Yankee-net, a sports media company that owned the New York Yankees, New Jersey Nets, New Jersey Devils, and a cable television division.

Speaking at his alma mater, The Citadel, in 2003, Schiller passed around five rings into the audience.

The first, valued at $45,000, was a Stanley Cup ring.

He also shared two World Series rings (1999 and 2000), Evander Holyfields boxing ring, and his commissioners ring from the SEC.

The most important thing that you can have is for people to say that they trust you, he told the cadets.

When Roy Kramer, who served on numerous NCAA committees and had been Vanderbilts athletic director for 12 years, succeeded Schiller on January 10, 1990, he launched both the SEC and college football as a whole into the era of the super-conferences.

With the possibility of increasing television revenues, Kramer realized that the SEC could take advantage of a loophole in NCAA rules to create an extra revenue-enhancing championship game, but in order to do so it needed at least 12 teams.

He asked, and received, unanimous permission from SEC presidents to begin interviewing potential candidates.

Rumors immediately swirled about potential additions, including Texas, Texas A&M, West Virginia, Florida State, and Miami (which joined the Big East in 1991 but later jumped to the ACC with Boston College and Virginia Tech).

One of the things we looked at was homogenous institutions, Kramer told ESPN years later.

We wanted schools with a strong fan base that traveled well.

TV wasnt a dominating factor.

Our people were interested in fan base and a broad-based program.

That drove our deliberations a lot more than TV markets.

Somewhat surprisingly, it was Arkansas that first jumped at the opportunity, which also led to the end of the troubled Southwest Conference.

In the late 1980s, SWC attendance had plummeted, with the eight Texas schools playing before an average of 65 percent capacity at home blamed mostly on the lack of winning programs and the success of the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Oilers in the National Football League.

Attendance was also declining in mens basketball even though Akansas was considered a national power under the direction of controversial coach Nolan Richardson (he won a national championship in 1994, and among his more famous quotes came after being asked why there were so many good players in the SEC: Where did most of the slave ships stop? In the South.) With Title IX set to mandate a massive budgetary increase for womens sports, the SWC was hindered by a limited television market consisting of only two states, even if one of them was Texas.

Coupled with sagging revenues, it also went through a litany of scandals, with seven of the nine schools placed on probation during the 1980s, and many top recruits electing to play elsewhere.

It was like if youre not cheating, youre not trying to win, former Arkansas football coach Lou Holtz was quoted as saying.

Though the SEC might have had some sexier possibilities, an invitation was extended to Arkansas.

On August 1, 1990, its board of trustees, acting on recommendations from athletic director Frank Broyles and the schools chancellor, approved the switch.

I personally was concerned that [Texas] A&M and Texas would leave and not include us, Broyles said (somewhat prophetically).

While the SEC looked for a 12th school, which would become South Carolina (an independent since 1971), to balance out the schedule, Texas and Texas A&M considered their options.

Texas flirted with the Pac-10 and Big Ten, but found both geographically undesirable.

Texas A&M did ask about joining the SEC, but the conference would only accept both in a package deal.

Eventually, they ended up in the Big Eight, along with Texas Tech and Baylor in a partial merger, but again only after a major move by the SEC.

Instead of adhering to a television contract extension with ABC and ESPN that the College Football Association negotiated, the SEC signed a landmark five-year, $85 million deal with CBS, which had just lost the NFL to Fox.

Days later, the Atlantic Coast Conference signed an $80 million deal with ABC and ESPN, and CBS quickly added the Big East for $75 million, including basketball games.

The Big Eight quickly evolved into the Big 12, signed a $100 million deal with ABC and Liberty Sports, and the SWC was no more.

With Arkansas and South Carolina joining league play in 1992, the SEC was split into Eastern and Western Divisions, with the top team in each meeting for the conference title.

Additional television contracts were signed with Jefferson-Pilot Sports and for ABC to broadcast the SEC Championship Game.

Undefeated Alabama beat Florida 28-21 in the first playoff at Legion Field in Birmingham, and two years later the championship was moved to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

In 1994, CBS Sports signed a multi-year deal with the SEC to broadcast football, mens basketball and womens basketball games, which was extended though the 2008-09 seasons.

Five years later, it extended a deal with ESPN.

But Kramer wasnt done changing the landscape of college football just yet.

In addition to turning the conference into a financial behemoth, he persuaded the four major college football bowls to agree to a rotating national championship game.

Though the Bowl Championship Series, which places teams in the Sugar, Fiesta, Orange and Rose bowls, has been immensely controversial, and continually fine-tuned the selection process for which two teams play in the title game, its also been a financial windfall for all involved.

While Kramers tenure (1990-2002) was tainted by claims of bias against Alabama and numerous incidents that had nearly every SEC program on NCAA probation (some more than once), the league won 85 national championship s and pocketed $654 million.

In 1990, the SEC schools divided $16.3 million.

In 2002, when Kramer stepped down, it was up to $95.7 million.

On July 2, 2002, Michael L.

Slive became the seventh commissioner of the SEC.

A former New Hampshire judge who also worked as an attorney defending universities charged with NCAA rules violations, Slive had served as the first commissioner of Conference USA, and helped turn it into a league on par with most others in basketball, and just a step behind in football before Cincinnati, Marquette, Louisville and DePaul all left for the Big East.

Among his early accomplishments were the SEC Task Force on Compliance and Enforcement report, which called for having all schools off NCAA probation within five years (he came very close), and the formation of the Academic Consortium, which linked the academic resources of the 12 schools.

In 2005, the league distributed $110.7 million.

I am keenly aware that to be the Commissioner of the SEC is both a privilege and a challenge, Slive said upon his appointment.

It's a privilege because the SEC is the premier conference in the country, with outstanding academic institutions, unsurpassed winning athletic traditions as well loyal, dedicated and passionate fans, outstanding athletic directors and coaches, and, of course, national championship-caliber student-athletes.

Slive regularly referred to the his time as commissioner (2002-15) as being "The Golden Age" of the SEC, and with good reason.

The SEC won 75 national championships in 17 of its 21 sponsored sports during those 13 years.

The league expanded by adding Texas A&M and Missouri, and in 2015 the conference distributed approximately $455.8 million among its 14 member institutions.

He was instrumental in the creation of both the SEC Network , and the College Football Playoff, and called former Alabama All-American center Sylvester Croom becoming the leagues first black head coach at Mississippi State in 2004 the most pivotal event of his term.

In 2006, Alabama, which had opted for Mike Shula over Croom during its 2003 head coaching search, watched Croom's Bulldogs apply the death blow to Shula's tenure with a 24-16 victory at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Crimson Tide athletic director Mal Moore instead turned to Nick Saban, and successfully lured him away from the Miami Dolphins.

With everything in place to thrive, both at the conference and school level, he led the most successful dynasty in college football history.

Its not bragging if you can back it up, Slive said while quoting Muhammad Ali during his final appearances at SEC Media Day sin 2014, when the history buff recited many of his heroes, from Dwight Eisenhower to Winston Churchill.

His final citation, though, especially stood out.

Nelson Mandela once said, and I quote, Sport has the power to change the world.

It has the power to inspire.

It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does.

We see the truth of Mr.

Mandelas statement in numerous ways in college athletics.

Slive's last day on the job was also when his contract ended, July 31, 2015.

He had already disclosed that he would begin treatment for a recurrence of prostate cancer, initially diagnosed in the late 1990s, while serving as a consultant for his replacement.

Greg Sankey had been his righthand man in the SEC offices for 13 years, and while he quickly made his own presence felt as the "The most powerful man in college athletics" (per numerous media outlets) it's easy to see Slive's influence on him as the league had to deal with issues like the transfer portal, NIL, playoff expansion in football, plus the the conference growing to 16 schools with the addition of Oklahoma and Texas in 2024.

"Commissioner Slive was truly one of the great leaders college athletics has ever seen and an even better person," Saban said in a statement after he died on May 16, 2018, at the age of 77.

"He was a wonderful friend to me and someone who I respected tremendously.

Mike changed the landscape of the Southeastern Conference and helped build our league into what you see today.

He was instrumental in growing college football and in the creation of the College Football Playoff.

The professionalism he displayed throughout his career was second to none.

He was an advocate for all of our universities and placed the utmost importance on the well-being of student-athletes.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with his family in this difficult time.

This is the third part of an extended series about the history of SEC football.

Some of the material was used in the book "Where Football is King," by Christopher Walsh.

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