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Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Printable Version

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RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - BostonCard - 06-16-2021

The streak was bound to end someday. Congratulations to Texas for being the ones to do it. They had an indisputably great year (which is not done yet).  Time to start a new streak next year.

BC

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Goose - 06-16-2021

I guess I am a contrarian, but I have no excitement about the "Director's Cup" one way or the other. It isn't really reflective of anything IMHO. It is a contrived competition where the scoring metrics are tweaked endlessly for no defined reason. It takes a dedicated effort to know who is winning moment to moment. One year a sport is mandatory, next year it only counts if you are left handed and wear a blue shirt. God forbid you score in too many sports, because then you can't count some of them. All sports are equal but some are more equal than others, except when they are not.

It is all fine and good that Stanford has done very well in this "event", but I don't judge Stanford athletics by winning or not winning the Director's Cup. I strongly suspect that UT did not start out the year saying "Well, we may suck at football, but by God we are going to win the Directors Cup". I just don't think it measures anything "real".

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - ColoradoTree - 06-16-2021

I guess I don't much care about the Cup qua Cup, but I cared about the streak and what it says about the depth of our athletic department year after year. 

So, this is a disappointment, for sure. But it's nothing on the level of what I'll feel when the NCAA title streak ends. That is something I will truly mourn, because it's simply unbelievable that it's gone on this long. Sometimes we leave it late, but we always get the job done in the end.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Leftcoast - 06-16-2021

Scoring changes aside, it was always great to see Stanford honored as having the best athletic department year-in-and-year-out.  The award fit our values - breadth, excellence across a wide range of sports, and not selling out other athletes for the "money sports" of men's football and basketball. 

So I'm sad we won't win this year and I'm surprised the inevitable loss happened in a year that DID see success and championships.  There were several years that felt "worse" to me at the time. I guess my spirits were buoyed by Tara's long longed for win.

Two other random thoughts:

1) Stanford finally losing may be a good thing and increase the relevance of the cup to other schools.  I'm sure Texas will be tracking this closely next year.  Now that the king is dethroned there's got to be 5-10 schools that believe they have a chance in 2021/2022 (Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, OSU, UCLA, etc).

2) If we were going to lose it's not surprising it would be Texas that took Stanford down.  Texas has a broad-based set of teams, competes with Stanford in many sports, and also pride themselves in being excellent in each varsity team fielded.  Hats off to you this year, 'horns.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Goose - 06-16-2021

(06-16-2021, 11:12 AM)ColoradoTree Wrote:  I guess I don't much care about the Cup qua Cup, but I cared about the streak and what it says about the depth of our athletic department year after year.
I understand your point, but I can't share it. Getting excited about Stanford repeatedly doing something that doesn't excite me just isn't happening

Quote:So, this is a disappointment, for sure. But it's nothing on the level of what I'll feel when the NCAA title streak ends. That is something I will truly mourn, because it's simply unbelievable that it's gone on this long. Sometimes we leave it late, but we always get the job done in the end.
FWIW, I too care much more about this streak. The metric is self-adopted. It wasn't artificially created by an outside organization. Each year, the definition of the goal is (almost) the same. It is "almost" because the NCAA does adopt new sports and drop old ones, but this is infrequent and independent of Stanford winning a championship in those sports. Many schools are happy to occasionally win any NCAA championship. Winning at least one a year is an ambitious and worthy goal IMHO.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - fullmetal - 06-16-2021

Anyone remember this SI cover?  
[Image: americas-best-sports-colleges-whos-no-1-...-cover.jpg]

I do think that an external award like the DC means that external entities get to control the rules, and that sucks.  But it is nice to be considered the best at something, even if someone else is creating the tape measure and defining the something.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - murky - 06-16-2021

(06-16-2021, 08:30 AM)Goose Wrote:  I guess I am a contrarian, but I have no excitement about the "Director's Cup" one way or the other. It isn't really reflective of anything IMHO. It is a contrived competition where the scoring metrics are tweaked endlessly for no defined reason. It takes a dedicated effort to know who is winning moment to moment. One year a sport is mandatory, next year it only counts if you are left handed and wear a blue shirt. God forbid you score in too many sports, because then you can't count some of them. All sports are equal but some are more equal than others, except when they are not.

It is all fine and good that Stanford has done very well in this "event", but I don't judge Stanford athletics by winning or not winning the Director's Cup. I strongly suspect that UT did not start out the year saying "Well, we may suck at football, but by God we are going to win the Directors Cup". I just don't think it measures anything "real".

I agree with most of what you say here.  But surely whomever is hosting the Director's cup doesn't want one school to win every year.  That's probably, at least in part, the motivation behind the constant moving of the bar.  Like with US News College rankings.  Nobody is going to pay attention if the list is always the same.

It's because of that, that its especially impressive Stanford was able to dominate and hold onto the streak for so long.  

As though, regardless of how hard they tried to stop us, Stanford's program was so excellent, it couldn't help but win.  Doesn't matter the formula.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Phogge - 06-16-2021

A National Football Championship would be about ten million times better.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Goose - 06-16-2021

(06-16-2021, 06:04 PM)Phogge Wrote:  A National Football Championship would be about ten million times better.
At least.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Canalejas - 06-16-2021

Despite the structure of the award being designed by committee and ultimately arbitrary, I like it. Not just because Stanford won it 25 times in a row, but because it became another way to compare schools and conferences to each other.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - bnarver - 06-18-2021

I've commented before on how Florida does so well competing in only 9 men's and 12 women's sports.  Texas does it one better.  They compete in 9 men's and 11 women's sports.  The only sports they won't receive points in are men's and women's cross country and women's soccer.  Imagine their score if they had.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Canalejas - 07-02-2021

Final Standings Released

https://nacda.com/news/2021/7/2/directorscup-the-university-of-texas-takes-home-the-crown.aspx

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Bruce Wang - 07-02-2021

Michael Lewis's new book about the pandemic (great btw but reads like half a book) mentions that The Economist had ranked the US as #1 in the world for pandemic preparedness.  He made the analogy that in this sense, 'Murica is like UT Longhorns Football of pandemic response.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - M T - 07-02-2021

(07-02-2021, 07:16 AM)Canalejas Wrote:  Final Standings Released

https://nacda.com/news/2021/7/2/directorscup-the-university-of-texas-takes-home-the-crown.aspx
The final difference was 56.25 points (1252.00 - 1195.75).  I would quibble with "The Cardinal tallied scores in 17 total sports".   Stanford scored in 23 sports, with about 209.5 points ignored in
WBVB  6th 25.00
MT&F 42nd 30.50
WT&F 25th ~48
WLax 17th 25.00
MGolf 38th 33.00
MSw 14th ~48

Other than making the round of 16 in WVB or MBB (64pts for 9th, 50pt for 17th), it would have taken improvements in two sports to make up the difference.

I expect NC State to object.  They were awarded 5pts for baseball with a ranking of "COVID".   Had they gotten the same 78 points as Stanford (for being eliminated in the CWS), they would have been 19th overall, not 23rd (bumping two SEC teams down a spot).

Twelve teams were scored as "Regional Cancelled" (for 5 points) in W. Golf.

Interesting... In 2021, the conference that got noted was because of teams in the top 25.  In 2019, the conference that got noted was because of teams in the top 10.  (As it turns out, the 2021 conference also had the most teams in the top 10.)  But, because they pushed the "standard" to the top 25, it will be dominated in the future by the big conferences.  If, say, all six Big South conference teams were to finish in 1 through 6, ahead of all other teams in the country, the 14-member conference would have been considered the best conference because of the teams in the top 25.

It would seem average score for a conference would be a more responsible way of comparing conferences.
The SEC's 14 teams totaled 9674.50 points, for an average of 691.04.
The PAC-12's 12 teams totaled 7394.00 points, for an average of 661.17.
(I didn't compute any other conference.)

Let's see, let me get this straight:
The Big Ten has 14 teams.
The Big-12 has 10 teams.
The Atlantic 10 has 11 teams.
The PAC-12 has 12 teams.
  Whew, at least one college conference knows how to count.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Mick - 07-02-2021

(07-02-2021, 09:46 AM)M T Wrote:  Let's see, let me get this straight:
The Big Ten has 14 teams.
The Big-12 has 10 teams.
The Atlantic 10 has 11 teams.
The PAC-12 has 12 teams.
  Whew, at least one college conference knows how to count.

Well, sure.  The Pac-12 is the "academic" conference...

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - Canalejas - 07-08-2021

Directors' Cup Shakeup Makes Clear the Pandemic's Impact on College Athletics

Quote:The rise of Texas and the slippage by Stanford are snapshots of the two strongest trends in Power 5 athletics during the pandemic year: The Big 12 surged and the Pac-12 struggled. Compared to the previous five-year average finish in the Directors’ Cup, Big 12 schools moved up an average of 3.4 spots among Power 5 programs, with six members improving over their previous average, three declining and one staying even. The Pac-12, meanwhile, was a mirror opposite: Its schools averaged losing 3.4 spots, with eight declining, three rising and one staying even.


RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - M T - 07-08-2021

Good thing the ten Big 12 teams did better than previously.  They averaged 581.25 points.
The twelve PAC 12 teams had an off year, averaging just 661.17

If someone REALLY wants to calling this "the collegiate ALL-SPORTS champion of America", then Stanford once again crushed Texas and all-comers by more than 150 points.

RE: Directors' Cup will be awarded for 2020-21 - fullmetal - 07-08-2021

I think it's worthwhile to sponsor non-revenue sports, and that brings value to the US athletic landscape.  The Director's Cup shouldn't be slowly narrowed to highlight a few, select revenue/popular sports.