texas a&m joined the sec conference in 1954.
texas a&m joined the sec conference in 1954.
when did texas a&m join the sec conference?
1954
in most years, since the 1991 sec conference expansion, the game was the first conference game on the schedule for both teams. the game was typically held during the second week of the season with a non-conference game being played prior. (this was typically the case with a few early exceptions where the game was the first game of the season for both programs.) due to sec expansion in 2012, the schedule needed to be modified to accommodate new sec members texas a&m and missouri. these became known as "bridge" schedules because they were meant to be temporary scheduling formats used to bridge the gap between the formats of 5–1–2, pre-expansion, and 6–1–1, which was agreed upon by the sec membership as the new format. the 2012 "bridge" schedule, issued by the sec home office, moved the uga-usc game to october 6, 2012. however, in 2013 the sec offices saw fit, even in the face of issuing another "bridge" schedule, to move the yearly tilt between the two programs back to the second week of the season for each program stating that the game would fill needed conference tv inventory for the early week in the season. at the same time the sec announced that another "bridge" schedule would be issued for 2014, but that schedule has yet to be released by the sec home office in birmingham, alabama. however, later the sec released a 2014 schedule that is not a bridge schedule, and also released the future cross-division opponents for each team for the 2014–2025 seasons. additionally, while usc remained as uga's first conference game, the first conference game for usc was a week 1 game against texas a&m. it remains to be seen if this is a permanent change to usc's schedule, as the sec has yet to release schedules for 2018 and beyond. in 2016, the game was postponed from saturday october 8 to sunday october 9 due to the effects of hurricane matthew.
georgia–south carolina football rivalry
the 2017 sec championship game was played on december 2, 2017 at mercedes-benz stadium in atlanta, georgia, and determined the 2017 football champion of the southeastern conference (sec). this was the first sec conference football championship at the mercedes-benz stadium. the game featured the eastern division champion, 2017 georgia bulldogs football team against the western division co-champion, the 2017 auburn tigers football team. this championship game was a rematch of their rivalry game, played on november 11, 2017. in that earlier game, auburn beat georgia by a score of 40-17. in this rematch, georgia won the sec championship by beating auburn 28-7. to date, this game marks the only time that any permanent cross division rivals have faced off in the sec championship game. this was also the first sec championship game with new sec on cbs announcer brad nessler replacing verne lundquist, who retired in 2016. the game was televised nationally by cbs.
2017 sec championship game