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An interesting Cal take on the Directors' Cup - yvonne - 07-07-2011

Cal Golden Blogs looks at Directors' Cup scoring, and whether it's a good measure of the overall strength of a school's athletic programs. Interestingly, while the largest group of fans said they refused to acknowledge an award that Stanford wins, the smallest number of voters said they preferred the Capital (Any)One but Stanford Cup.

http://www.californiagoldenblogs.com/2011/7/4/2257969/a-look-inside-the-directors-cup

Re: An interesting UC East Bay take on the Directors' Cup - jacketree - 07-08-2011

Here's a question:

Why do we need any system (perfectly equitable or otherwise) to find the "best" athletic department. Don't all the sports have some sort of championship thingy complete with a shiny trophy/plaque? Why isn't that enough?  (I'll just leave the bowl system alone for now.) I mean I get that everyone likes to be at the top of any given list (how else does one explain NASCAR), but really, what is the big deal?



Also, I guess I missed the discussion about how unfair this Capital One Cup is.  (Is it just because Stanford didn't win [Stanford can't win everything you know], or is there really something sinister?) I wasn't that aware of this particular cup and thought Capital One usually just dealt with mascot throw-downs.

Re: An interesting UC East Bay take on the Directors' Cup - Farm93 - 07-08-2011

The Capital One Cup is a fraud.  Pure and simple.  Clearly, designed to get some East Coast ACC or SEC program to bubble to the top at least some of the time.

Though it should be noted that Stanford won the women's side, and scored more points overall than any program.  So I am not comfortable with the idea that Stanford didn't win.

In any event, the Credit Card/ESPN Cup overweights Football and Men's and Women's Basketball with a 3X score.  One could see that logic, I suspect.  But then the Cup puts Women's Volleyball, Softball and Baseball in the same 3X category.  The Cup used to promote "Every Sport Counts" as the tagline.  And yet the Cup did not count Men's and Women's Water Polo, Fencing, Men's Gymnastics, Men's Volleyball.  It is hard to miss that Stanford just so happens to have a very rich history in all of those sports.  (Women's Bowling was also not included, but that's not an Olympic sport so whatever)  Ultimately that Cup dropped the Every Sport Counts tagline.  If those NCAA & Olympic sports were included with any weight at all, Stanford would have finished #1 or #2 on the men's side and destroyed the field on the Women's side.

Then to really cook the books lacrosse is given rather elite 2X scoring status, similar to Soccer, Track & Swimming even though Lacrosse is played in only a handful of mid-Atlantic states.  Of course, one can't help but notice that Men's Lacrosse is not in the Pac-12 or MPSF list of sports.  One note there, Lacrosse actually helped Stanford Women to some degree.  Yet the women are so far out ahead of the rest that almost any scoring system is going to result in a Stanford win.

The cup has other minor flaws.  The cup awards point based on final polls, so it is possible for a team to get 3rd or 4th place points even if they lost in the round of 16.  The cup breaks ties with quirky systems, including alphabetical order. But those are all minor to the weights allocated to the various NCAA sports.

Re: An interesting UC East Bay take on the Directors' Cup - yvonne - 07-08-2011

The Capital One Cup was specifically engineered to ensure that Stanford would not win:

  1. Men's and women's sports were separated
  2. Points were weighted arbitrarily, so that so-called more "popular sports" count more, but more popular is not determined by the number of schools competing
  3. Although there are 16 NCAA sports, only 14 are counted in the Capital One Cup, and the eliminated sports just happen to be those Stanford excels in

Here's a summary from the Daily:
Quote:To start, just take a quick peek at the Capital One Cup website. If you want to know the scoring, there’s a little box by the standings, and it starts with the headline “EVERY CHAMPIONSHIP COUNTS” (yep, it’s in all caps) before listing the scoring system.

Really? Take the men’s side for example. Removing co-ed sports (since the COC decided that women and men are separate but equal), there are 16 NCAA sports, and you can make it 17 if you want to split football into FBS and FCS. The COC only has 14. Apparently gymnastics, water polo and volleyball don’t count as championships. I wasn’t aware that all those players were playing for nothing. Oh by the way, how did Stanford do in those sports? First, third and seventh in the country. Hmm, coincidence.

But wait, the COC is all about popularity, right? That’s what it claims anyway. So those sports, which have fewer than 25 Division-I teams each, aren’t popular enough to qualify. That’s why women’s gymnastics is not in either; it only has 63 D-I teams. Now, if women’s gymnastics were like men’s lacrosse, which is a way more popular sport (and has no Stanford varsity team, by the way) with its 61 D-I teams, it would not only be factored in, but it would count for twice as much as a minor sport like tennis (262 D-I teams, Stanford a perennial contender).


Re: An interesting UC East Bay take on the Directors' Cup - yvonne - 07-08-2011

That's an important key. The Director's Cup is an award among peers. I said in an earlier post that it's like the Olympic gold for athletic directors, but maybe a better analogy would be an Academy Awards with objective criteria. The Director's Cup has already outlived one sponsor, and may outlive others.

The only important thing about the Capital AnyOne but Stanford Cup is that it has visibility from ESPN. It, like the Gauntlet from a few years ago, may be a flash in the pan.

Re: An interesting UC East Bay take on the Directors' Cup - jacketree - 07-08-2011

Fair points in response, although "fraud" seems a little strong to me.  The scoring system is transparent, so while you might not think this is the best measure of AD prowess, it isn't fraudulent.  I could be wrong, but Stanford fans seem to be calling shenanigans because someone other than Stanford might win this on occasion.  (Why exactly does the scoring favor the ACC or SEC? And don't forget that ESPN loves the Big East.)

But even if the award is fraudulent, Stanford women did win.  The COC does appear to be heavily weighted toward those college sports from which ESPN generates most of its college sport revenue. And since CO is a sponsor; well, there you go.  I would also note that Stanford is very strong in all those 3X categories other than men's basketball at the moment.

I would think the Olympic gold for ADs would be running in the black, but if they want to win one of these arbitrarily scored cups, more power to them. However, with or without a cup, we can tell that if Stanford or anyone else spends gobs of money in athletics, provides equal opportunities for men and women, sponsors an otherworldly number of sports (relative to most programs) and wins a lot; that they have a strong athletic program.

What is the best measure of a program? Number of sports? Titles? And as someone in the blog pointed out, it is much easier to win the Men's Gymnastics title than Men's Basketball, so that need to be taken into account.

Re: An interesting UC East Bay take on the Directors' Cup - yvonne - 07-08-2011

(07-08-2011, 12:39 PM)jacketree link Wrote:What is the best measure of a program? Number of sports? Titles? And as someone in the blog pointed out, it is much easier to win the Men's Gymnastics title than Men's Basketball, so that need to be taken into account.

It needs to be equitably taken into account. As the Daily article pointed out, there are several times more teams playing tennis than there are playing lacrosse, and therefore, it is easier to win lacrosse than tennis, but lacrosse is in the ABSC, and tennis is not. Moreover, lacrosse is given 2x scoring despite having few teams. This seems to be a deliberate attempt to ensure that Stanford does not win.

2X Lacrosse - jacketree - 07-08-2011

I think lacrosse is 2X in the scoring because ESPN shows a lot of lacrosse and anything that generates even a smidgen more interest in lacrosse (contrived perhaps) is a good thing; not because Stanford doesn't do lacrosse and they want to specifically screw Stanford.

In any event, the easy thing is to ignore the Capital One Cup. The one thing arguing against my position that this is mostly related to advertisement for ESPN's favorite college sports, is that people watching ESPN probably really don't care about this competition and aren't going to tune into a lacrosse game just because some weird cup is on the line.

And it would be really easy just to weight points in any given sport by multiplying that score by the number of teams playing that sport.

Here are two more questions. Which program is best? Which program will score higher in the Directors Cup?

Program A sponsors 35 sports teams; one of them wins a conference and national title; another team wins a conference title; a total of 20 teams reach their playoffs, and three of those teams finish their respective playoffs no worse than 8th place; or

Program B sponsors 15 sports teams and four of those teams win conference titles. 10 teams participate in post-season tournaments; two of those teams finish in no worse than 8th place. One of those teams wins a national title.


(These are completely made up programs by the way; any blind match to some actual program is purely coincidental. There is probably some minimum number of teams to be in Division 1 and it might be more than 15.)

Re: An interesting UC East Bay take on the Directors' Cup - Farm93 - 07-08-2011

(07-08-2011, 12:39 PM)jacketree link Wrote:Fair points in response, although "fraud" seems a little strong to me.  The scoring system is transparent, so while you might not think this is the best measure of AD prowess, it isn't fraudulent.  I could be wrong, but Stanford fans seem to be calling shenanigans because someone other than Stanford might win this on occasion.  (Why exactly does the scoring favor the ACC or SEC? And don't forget that ESPN loves the Big East.)

Fraud was more in the street slang sense, but I could defend the use of the word fraud.

"Every Sport Counts" was their slogan throughout the first few months of the program.  It was featured in their ads and on the webpage.  And yet, every NCAA sport didn't count, a fraudulent claim if you will.  In fact, I think there were a variety of universities and conferences that pointed this out to Capital One and ESPN, which is probably why the "Every Sport Counts" claim was quietly removed during the winter. 

We can argue whether or not they are popular, but by most accounts volleyball, gymnastics and even water polo are considered sports.  So claiming that winning the Cup was superior or valuable because every sport counts, was a fraudulent claim.

Re: An interesting UC East Bay take on the Directors' Cup - Mick - 07-08-2011

(07-08-2011, 04:08 PM)Farm93 link Wrote:[quote author=jacketree link=topic=4177.msg29907#msg29907 date=1310153944]
Fair points in response, although "fraud" seems a little strong to me.  The scoring system is transparent, so while you might not think this is the best measure of AD prowess, it isn't fraudulent.  I could be wrong, but Stanford fans seem to be calling shenanigans because someone other than Stanford might win this on occasion.  (Why exactly does the scoring favor the ACC or SEC? And don't forget that ESPN loves the Big East.)

Fraud was more in the street slang sense, but I could defend the use of the word fraud.

"Every Sport Counts" was their slogan throughout the first few months of the program.  It was featured in their ads and on the webpage.  And yet, every NCAA sport didn't count, a fraudulent claim if you will.  [/quote]

I just went to the advertised "World's Best Breakfast" diner in Minneapolis across from the Hilton.  Fairly certain it wasn't the world's best breakfast.  May not have been the best breakfast on the block, truth be told.