SEC Championship Game

The SEC Championship Game refers to the game determining the Southeastern Conference's football season champion. The championship game pits the SEC Western Division representative against the Eastern Division representative in a game held after the regular season has been completed. Thus far, nine of the fourteen SEC members have played in the Championship. Ole Miss and Texas A&M have yet to reach the game from the West. Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and Missouri have never represented the East. The Eastern division currently holds an 11-9 advantage in the game.

While 9 out of 14 SEC members have played in the game, only 6 have won, those being Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida of the Eastern Division, and Alabama, Auburn, and LSU of the Western Division.

History
The SEC was the first conference in the NCAA to hold a football championship game made possible when the conference expanded in 1991 to twelve members with the addition of the University of Arkansas and the University of South Carolina. 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. However, since 1994, the game has been played at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

In 2009, Alabama and Florida met in the SEC Championship Game for the seventh time in the eighteen year history of the game, the record for the most times any two teams have faced each other in the Championship game. 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 each of their seven SEC Championship game appearances. In addition, the 2009 game marked the second consecutive year that the number 1 (Florida) and number 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.

Results
Results from all SEC Championship games that have been played. Rankings are from the AP Poll, winner in bold italics

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.

In 2009, the Western division champion, Alabama, was the home team. Because LSU has won the Western division in previous four consecutive seasons that the Western division champion was the "home team" and LSU traditionally wears white jerseys for home games, the SEC West champion wore white in nine consecutive SEC Championship Games (2000-2008). As of the 2011 contest, the designated home team is 12–8 overall in SEC championship games.

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 who 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.

Selection criteria
Division standings are based on each team's overall conference record. 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

 * 1) Head-to-head competition between the two tied teams. Because all division rivals meet during the season and NCAA overtime has made tie games impossible since 1996, this rule will always break the tie barring extreme circumstances (i.e., the tied teams' game was cancelled, or called off while tied, because of to weather or other emergency and was never rescheduled or completed).  However, SEC rules still contain the remaining procedures if those circumstances were to happen.
 * 2) Records of the tied teams within the division.
 * 3) 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.
 * 4) Complete record vs. all non-divisional opponents.
 * 5) Complete record vs. all common non-divisional teams if there be any.
 * 6) 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.
 * 7) The tied team with the highest ranking in the Bowl Championship Series Standings following the last weekend of regular-season games shall be the divisional representative in the SEC Championship Game.

Three or more-team procedure

 * 1) (Once the tie has been reduced to two teams, go to the two-team tie-breaker format.)
 * 2) Combined head-to-head record among the tied teams.
 * 3) Record of the tied teams within the division.
 * 4) 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.
 * 5) Complete record vs. non-division teams.
 * 6) Complete record vs. all common non-divisional teams.
 * 7) 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.
 * 8) The tied team with the highest ranking in the Bowl Championship Series Standings following the last weekend of regular-season games shall be the divisional representative in the SEC Championship Game, unless the second of the tied teams is ranked within five-or-fewer places of the highest ranked tied team. In this case, the head-to-head results of the top two ranked tied teams shall determine the representative in the SEC Championship Game.

Winner's bowl performance
The SEC champion plays in the Sugar Bowl unless they have been selected to play in the BCS Championship Game. Ten winners of the SEC Championship Game have gone on to win the national title (outright or shared), including six consecutive titles from 2006-2011. Rankings are from the AP Poll.