Mississippi State enters the 2016 SEC tournament as regular season champions of the Southeastern Conference, a fact that will forevermore be in spite of what transpires in Hoover this week, but that hasn’t always been the case.
Prior to 1977
There was no SEC tournament. The teams (there were 10 at that time) were divided into Eastern and Western Divisions. For many years, the West had only four teams: Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss and Mississippi State, while the East had Florida, Georgia, Auburn, Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Kentucky. It is unclear why the divisions were not evenly divided but in 1975, Auburn moved to the Western Division, giving each division five teams.