The SEC’s Ascent to Men’s Basketball Supremacy

A decade ago, while the SEC’s football teams were dominating the initial iterations of the four-team College Football Playoff, its men’s basketball league was, at best, forgettable. The then-14-team conference sent just three to four teams every year to the Big Dance between 2013 and 2017.

But the SEC, known historically as a football conference, has turned itself into a men’s basketball powerhouse—and is primed to make history this postseason.

Since 2015, the SEC has worked to incentivize schools to invest in their men’s programs, including hiring top-notch coaches and building sparkling facilities rivaling those of the conference’s football teams. Through scheduling and publicity, the SEC office has also worked to bring the culture of basketball to SEC country, extending the pageantry of a “college football Saturday” to “college basketball Saturday.”

The league has come a long way.

On the court, Alabama has become a mainstay throughout the past few seasons. This year, Florida has had a breakout run. Auburn held the top spot in the AP Top 25 poll for eight weeks until getting knocked off by Duke on March 9. The Tigers are expected to get the first overall seed in the tournament field, despite losing to Tennessee in the SEC semifinal Saturday. And despite losing legendary coach John Calipari in the 2024 offseason, Kentucky is courting a three-seed under the impressive showing of new coach Mark Pope.

Off the court, the SEC has attracted impressive metrics, from millions of television viewers to celebrity sightings. The conference tournament hosted ESPN’s College GameDay for the first time and solicited the network’s top basketball crew.

All in all, once the SEC conference championship between Tennessee and Florida is decided, the league will likely make history: At least 13 of the SEC’s 16 teams are projected to make the tournament, per ESPN bracketology—smashing the previous NCAA record of 11 set by the Big East in 2011.

“I say, within this iconic conference, that men’s basketball is still this unique growth opportunity,” SEC associate commissioner for men’s basketball, Garth Glissman, tells Front Office Sports. “It’s unique in life, in my view, to have the tradition and passion in the SEC with this growth opportunity in front of us. So the challenge is, how do we raise the profile, and ultimately the outcomes, of SEC men’s basketball in a way that matches the excellence of the conference and football, our premier sport?”

Greg Sankey took the reins of the SEC in 2015, at a time when its men’s basketball power was almost nonexistent. 

For decades, Kentucky had carried SEC men’s basketball on its shoulders, particularly in the years of Calipari (who left abruptly last season to help with a renaissance at Arkansas). Florida has some experience, with two back-to-back championships by Billy Donovan’s program in the early 2000s. The SEC produced NBA players, but most of the schools still treated men’s hoops like an afterthought—and the conference had no central basketball leadership.

A year after his tenure began, Sankey brought in former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese as a special advisor to the commissioner of men’s basketball. The goal was to beef up the league—and the hire represented the first time the SEC office employed a dedicated leader of men’s basketball. Three months later, he hired former NBA and college basketball coach Dan Leibovitz to take on the more official role of associate men’s basketball commissioner.

Together, the group created a voice for men’s basketball at the conference office. Sankey and Leibovitz also challenged schools—some of the wealthiest in the country—to use some of the SEC’s existing riches to boost their men’s programs. In 2016, Tranghese reportedly told SEC officials: “You have everything you need.”

“I think Sankey and Dan were able to make the case that they could take all of the financial rewards associated with the conference’s overwhelming success in football and pivot, to some extent, to invest more in basketball,” Glissman says. “And that there were rewards for doing so.”

Glissman says the “primary” investment was “a commitment to hiring elite coaches. And that is absolutely a common thread to the success that we have this season.” 

Current known college coaching salaries demonstrate just how dramatic that investment has been: By 2024, six of the top 20 highest-paid men’s coaches hailed from the SEC. Arkansas’s Calipari ranks second in all of men’s college basketball, earning around $8 million per year. Auburn’s Bruce Pearl ($5.71 million) and Tennessee’s Rick Barnes ($5.7 million) rank fourth and fifth, respectively. Alabama’s Nate Oats ranks 11th ($4.5 million), and Texas A&M’s Buzz Williams ranks 12th ($4.5 million). Mizzou’s Dennis Gates is tied for 17th ($4 million). Even Florida’s Todd Golden, one of the league’s youngest coaches, earns $3.6 million this year.

“We have a lot of alpha personalities, big personalities,” Glissman says. “Guys who, through the sheer force of their personality, can change the trajectory of a program.” (Of course, not every headline is a good one.) And yes, he says, they have a group chat.

The SEC arguably broke through in 2018, when the league sent eight teams to the Big Dance that year—a conference record at the time. Once the schools got rolling, it was up to the league to attract high-level recruits and convert rabid SEC football fans to the hardwood.

Glissman replaced Leibovitz in 2023, as all these factors were converging. “He calls himself a self-proclaimed outsider” to the South—he grew up in Nebraska and lived several years in New York. When he arrived in Birmingham, Glissman noticed an opportunity to capitalize on the region’s recent population and economic boom. “The SEC’s growth in men’s basketball is another example of a rising tide lifting all ships in the sense that there have been so many positive developments in this part of the country—and that has contributed to enormous growth for all SEC institutions,” he says.

Glissman also has worked to build a flavor of college basketball that replicates “what a college football Saturday in the South means.” The league now emphasizes marquee matchups or rivalry games on Saturdays, like Auburn-Alabama or Texas–Texas A&M. The idea: Encourage fans to extend their traditions, from raucous tailgates to sold-out stadiums, through the college basketball season. That culture has also encouraged fans and donors to support their men’s basketball programs through NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals. With fewer players on each roster, a $3-to-$4 million range per team is enough to put a good roster together in the power conferences, one source tells FOS.

“People primarily associate that [culture] with football,” Glissman says. “But football season doesn’t last all year. So what I’ve tried to do in partnership with our schools and all stakeholders is, hey, let’s give SEC fans, to an even greater degree, an avenue to extend their SEC fandom. It doesn’t have to stop when football season is over.”

The payoff is obvious. The number of league games drawing at least 1 million viewers has exceeded previous seasons “by a substantial margin,” Glissman says. The Feb. 15 Auburn-Alabama matchup, which drew 2.8 million viewers, was ESPN’s most-watched regular-season game in six years. And the conference tournament in Nashville, in addition to getting the College GameDay treatment, is hosting a cadre of NBA GMs. Even country music star Morgan Wallen was in attendance, taking in the quarterfinals from a courtside seat.

Glissman points to the March 1 regular-season matchup between Tennessee and Alabama—a must-win for the Crimson Tide to share a conference title with Auburn—to illustrate the culture that has attracted all this pageantry. A Tennessee buzzer beater and subsequent win solidified Auburn’s top spot, and the Tigers celebrated as if they were the biggest Volunteers fans in the whole country. Players posted a video reacting to the buzzer beater on the team bus, busting out into chants of the Vols fight song, “Rocky Top.”

The SEC has become the strongest basketball league in the country, and has successfully converted its fervent football fans to basketball junkies. But despite its measurable success, one benchmark continues to elude the SEC in this new era: a national championship. The last SEC title was Kentucky’s in 2012.

“I’m not into bold predictions,” Glissman says of the prospect. “But that’s the challenge—and that’s how we are measured.”