The Southeastern Conference shattered the record for most teams selected for the men’s NCAA tournament field on Sunday, with 14 of 16 schools going dancing. Why are we surprised?
The SEC has been a slumbering basketball behemoth for most of the century. In 2016, it saw just three teams make the tournament, with Vanderbilt eliminated in the First Four by 20 points. But the conference has since put a renewed focus on hoops. Growing coffers were opened to improve facilities and hire top coaches. Advanced NIL programs have attracted—and retained—top talent. Expansion turned a super conference into a superconference.
Less than a decade after that three-bid year, the SEC was in contention for three No. 1 seeds in 2025. “It’s the best basketball league, top-to-bottom, relative to the field, that I’ve ever seen,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said in an interview.
The only question now is: Can everyone else catch back up?
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The SEC’s rise began with Greg Sankey’s ascension to commissioner in 2015. Former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese was brought on as an advisor the following year. As Tranghese studied the conference, he saw what everyone else is now seeing—there was no reason these teams shouldn’t be winning.
In particular, Tranghese convinced administrators that football’s long shadow didn’t have to doom basketball. A belief had taken hold, with no basis in fact. Coaches felt everyone had given up.
“The SEC was really beaten down,” Tranghese said in a phone interview. “I just said, ‘This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.’”
Auburn had recently built an $86 million arena with the express purpose of giving basketball a home it could feel proud of, across the street from Jordan-Hare Stadium. Ole Miss poured $96.5 million into a new Pavilion that opened in 2016.
Schools were encouraged to focus on hiring top coaches. Officiating standards were raised. Self-promotion was made mandatory. Tranghese gives John Calipari—then the coach at Kentucky, this year leading Arkansas—a lot of credit for his steadfast role as the conference’s flag-bearer.
Now Calipari is one of 12 college basketball coaches earning $5 million annually, according to USA Today’s database. Six work in the SEC, including Bruce Pearl at Auburn and Chris Beard at Ole Miss.
Beard’s arrival in 2023 further energized fans and donors in Oxford, Miss., Rebels NIL collective leader Walker Jones said. With financial firepower, the team added six transfers ahead of this season, including Sean Pedulla from Virginia Tech, the leading scorer this year for the No. 6 seed—the program’s best ranking since 2001.
Auburn’s Tigers are a No. 1 seed for the second time in school history. Alabama coach Nate Oats has embraced his institution’s football bona fides rather than run from them.
None of this is complicated. Yes, the Big Ten distributes a similar amount of revenue to its schools, but the SEC spends more on average on basketball, based on balance sheets reviewed by Sportico.
In 2023, Sankey brought in Garth Glissman from the NBA league office as associate commissioner to further push SEC basketball. Teams have increasingly professionalized their analytics and scouting departments as the line between college and pro sports blurs.
But Glissman sees larger factors at work. Basketball remains the sport of cities, and Southern cities are booming. Nine of the 10 fastest-growing metro areas are in the South. The region surpassed the Northeast’s population in 1998. The South now boasts a higher share of national GDP, too.
Still, half of the SEC’s 14 tournament-bound teams play in states without NBA franchises, leaving the colleges as the biggest shows in town.
“There was a tremendous talent base in this part of the country,” Glissman said in a phone interview. “Economic activity in this part of the country is on fire. Enrollment trends at our institutions are on fire. Football has been on fire. … I just looked at it objectively and said, ‘This thing is going to take off.’”
Maybe the SEC’s rise begins not with Sankey, then, but with the civil rights granted to Black citizens after the end of Jim Crow, or the business incentives that have drawn companies to the region over the last 50 years, or the Tennessee Valley Authority’s supplying power for modern air conditioning in the region. In retrospect, it’s worth asking why the SEC’s basketball awakening took so long?
The league’s position is only staggering in its newness. Four of the top six seeds. A 30-4 record against ACC neighbors. The best conference-level ranking in the 29-year history of analytics site kenpom.com, as the SEC boasted during its own tournament.
Of course, all those stats will be thrown out if the league doesn’t deliver in March. Anything less than multiple Final Four teams would be a disappointment. But either way, don’t expect the SEC to relinquish its newfound hold on the top of college basketball. Just look at the trends.
