[murky]

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.

[murky]

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.