NCAA Football SEC Championship Rules

The Southeastern Conference (SEC) football championship game is played each year, pitting the winners of the conference's two divisions against each other. The winner of the game is named the SEC champion and receives an automatic berth to a game in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Because the SEC is often college football's strongest conference, the winner typically plays in the BCS game reserved to determine the national champion.

  1. Conference Championship Game

    • According to a 2008 Wall Street Journal article, the SEC was the first of the major conferences to stage a conference championship game for football in 1992. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), college athletics' governing body, has a rule that allows conferences with at least 12 teams to hold a football conference championship game and to share any game revenues from TV rights and ticket sales among the schools in the conference.

    Basics

    • The conference game matches the winner of the conference's Eastern Division against the winner of the Western Division. The game is always played at a predetermined neutral site, which since 1993 has been held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Ga. The game is played with the same on-field rules as are used during the regular season, including the use of overtime sessions to settle a tie.

    Tiebreakers

    • Tiebreakers are used to determine a division winner for the championship game when multiple teams post the best record in a division. There are numerous tiebreakers. For a two-team tie, it starts with who won a head-to-head match-up. If there was no game between the teams, then it falls to records within the division. If that does not determine a division champion, then common opponents are looked at. A similar process occurs for a three-way tie, whittling the list down first to two teams and then to one.