Michigan Moves Up to 2nd In Director's Cup Standings
Following up on yesterday's post, Michigan has improved to 2nd place (tying our best final finish) in the Director's Cup standings. This boost was led by a 6th place finish in women's cross country, 9th in wrestling, and 58th in men's cross country.
Rankings of note:
1. Stanford 752.75
2. Michigan 544.25
3. Minnesota 532
4. Ohio State 522.50
6. Penn State 461
12. Wisconsin 408.50
21. Notre Dame 357
23. Nebraska 348
37. Purdue 264.50
45. Michigan State 235.50
46. Indiana 233
54. Rutgers 211
55. Iowa 208.50
63. Northwestern 164.50
72. Illinois 139.50
92. Maryland 108
141. Oregon State (lowest P5) 53
The next poll comes out in April and will include bowling, gymnastics, and hockey (one sport we will gain some ground on Stanford). With very strong seasons in softball, baseball, water polo, and tennis we look poised at a strong finish in the top 5. Unfortunately, Stanford will score in even more sports and higher than us in some of our strong ones to run away with the title once again.
http://www.nacda.com/directorscup/nacda-directorscup-current-scoring.ht…
March 24th, 2016 at 12:17 PM ^
March 24th, 2016 at 12:21 PM ^
I think finishing high, even if you do not win, shows that you have a strong athletic culture across the board.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:38 PM ^
March 24th, 2016 at 12:48 PM ^
Looking ahead, we have a good shot. I, too, would enjoy that after a year of Hackett. If we could get our lacrosse teams in tournament shape and make the tourney in women's basketall we would perennial be 2nd place at the least. More consistency in soccer would be nice, too. By my count we currently have regular top 10 programs in: M/W Swimming, M/W Gymnastics, Football, Softball, Women's Tennis, Field Hockey, Water Polo, Wrestling, M/W Cross Country, W Track, Rowing, Ice Hockey. Women's Volleyball, Women's Soccer are top 25. Men's Soccer, Men's Tennis, Women's BBall, Men's Track are not consistently competitive. M/W lacrosse are struggling. I chose to leave men's basketball up to your own personal opinions to avoid a Beilein thread and probably forgot some others.
Edit: Baseball is trending up and should score points for us this year and in the future.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:23 PM ^
UNC won the inagural cup in 1993-94. Stanford has won every year since -- 21 in a row (soon to be 22).
March 24th, 2016 at 11:15 PM ^
they win the national title in sports nobody else plays.
John U. Bacon pointed out in his latest tome that the Director's Cup was a competition in spending money. Stanford fields teams in more sports and gets it based on volume, not necessarily quality. That said, Michigan's record in this competition is pretty good, but it's not really about athletic excellence.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:18 PM ^
this year was kind of a let down...We should have been top 5.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:22 PM ^
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March 24th, 2016 at 12:27 PM ^
How on earth does Stanford dominate this cup? Do they count things like theoretical math yard dash?
Edit: Never mind. Rowing, golf and water polo.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:59 PM ^
20 for women, 16 for men (sailing is co-ed and appears to count for both). Michigan has 27. My understanding is that a school can score points for performance in any varsity sport. Having more sports is a significant advantage.
Anyone with knowledge of how numbers work can see the flaw in not averaging things based on number of varsity sports offered. Kind of BS that Stanford gets to just run away with the Cup every year because they have the most sports. This has been an edition of "Sour Grapes".
So with that in mind, perhaps weighting the sports based on how much competition their is across the country. Put emphasis on the varisity sports that most colleges offer, and give only a tiny bump for being the best Lawn Dart varsity team in the country.
Men's
| 1. | Stanford | 106 |
| 2. | Clemson | 72 |
| 3. | Alabama | 60 |
| 3. | North Dakota State | 60 |
| 5. | Syracuse | 44 |
| 6. | Jacksonville State | 36 |
| 7. | Akron | 30 |
| 7. | Richmond | 30 |
| 9. | Ohio State | 24 |
| 9. | Sam Houston State |
24 |
Women's
| 1. | Penn State | 66 |
| 2. | Nebraska | 60 |
| 3. | Duke | 44 |
| 4. | Texas | 36 |
| 5. | Florida State | 30 |
| 5. | Minnesota | 30 |
| 7. | Virginia | 28 |
| 8. | Kansas | 24 |
| 8. | Rutgers | 24 |
| 10. | New Mexico | 20 |
| 10. | Syracuse | 20 |
That's not why Stanford wins, though. You could make a rule "Only sports sponsored by Michigan count" and Stanford would still dominate.
Stanford wins because they win multiple national championships every year (and add a bunch of top-10 finishes on top of that).
Stanford wins, mostly, because Stanford is really good at sports. Across the board.
Having more programs (including some niche ones), as referenced above, certainly helps. But credit where credit is due.
In the meantime, great to see Michigan doing so well!
Plus part of the reason Michigan does well is because we have a lot more sports than other schools. There are like 18 men's gymnastics teams total. It's kind of silly to argue "Stanford shouldn't get to count all it's many varsity programs" and at the same time be satisfied with our elite standing.
A school like Oregon, for example, has a top bball team this year, a solid football team, elite softball, strong volleyball, ranked baseball, national champion caliber mens and women track and cross country....and they're no where to be found because they don't have many varsity programs.
I think part of the reason for the Director's Cup is to encourage schools to have more sports. If Stanford wants to have an underwater basketweaving team good for them.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:28 PM ^
How's our bowling team?
March 24th, 2016 at 12:32 PM ^
but purely for medicinal purposes
In reefer, Michigan (Ann Arbor) smokes Stanford (Palo Alto) easily, but Cal (Berkeley) bakes Ann Arbor.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:34 PM ^
For everyone wondering how Stanford has gotten (and gets every year) its points:
14th women's cross country (6)
3rd men's cross country (9)
9th field hockey (5)
3rd football (11)
5th women's soccer (NR)
1st men's soccer (NR)
17th volleyball (17)
16th women's track (6)
8th men's track (58)
19th wrestling (9)
*Michigan's finish in parentheses
March 24th, 2016 at 12:37 PM ^
In case you wondered where Michigan's points came from, here you go:
W Cross Country (6th) - 73.5
W Indoor Track (6th) - 73.5
M Cross Country (9th) - 69
Wrestling (9th-10th) - 68.25
W Swimming (10th) - 67.5
Football (11th) - 66
W Field Hockey (5th-8th) - 60
W Volleyball (17th-32nd) - 50
M Indoor Track (58th-63rd) - 13.5
And here are Stanford's points:
M Soccer (1st) - 100
W Swimming (2nd) - 90
M Cross Country (3rd) - 85
Football (3rd) - 85
W Soccer (5th-8th) - 73
M Indoor Track (8th-9th) - 69.75
W Cross Country (14th) - 61.5
W Indoor Track (16th) - 58.5
Wrestling (19th) - 55
W Volleyball (17th-32nd) - 50
W Field Hockey (9th-16th) - 25
Note how they have 4 top-3 finishes, worth 360 points total. Their lead over Michigan is 210 points. Compare Michigan & Stanford, and you realize how much ground #2 Michigan would have to make up to pass #1 Stanford.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:35 PM ^
March 24th, 2016 at 12:38 PM ^
Dave Brandon just fondled himself.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:50 PM ^
(NTDB)
March 24th, 2016 at 12:42 PM ^
March 24th, 2016 at 12:50 PM ^
I always thought Stanford had more sports than we did so that helped. Not sure if that's true. If it's NOT true, then at the very least they excel across the board and it's impressive.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:52 PM ^
Mike Montgomery made the tournament ten years in a row before leaving for the NBA, and that included a run to the Final Four as well as another Elite Eight run.
Johnson and Dawkins were not nearly as consistent, but both made runs to the Sweet 16. Dawkins also had some bad luck with the tourney committee. Three times his teams finished .500 or better in the Pac-12 but got sent to the NIT. And they won it twice.
Out of sports that count for this, Stanford has men's water polo, men's volleyball, fencing, and women's beach volleyball. We have men's ice hockey. Only top 10 finishes each for men's and women's count towards total, but they do have an advantage because I'm guessing it's not hard for them to finish very highly in these very niche sports.
Definitely their endowment that allows them to field more teams than other schools is the largest contributing factor.
For example, their AD website lists 16 mens teams and 20 womens teams. Ours has 13 and 14 respectively. When we only have a hypothetical ceiling of 75% as many points as them to begin with, it's not likely to beat them. (Especially when the additional teams they have are predominately "niche" sports where finishing in the top 10 -- which is what they need to do to accumulate points -- is not an astronomical accomplishment.)
That said, their AD is extremely well run.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:56 PM ^
that would make it a lot more interesting. Just rank schools by their average finish in all the sports in which they compete, with some minimum number of sports to be included in the cup rankings. Stanford wins because they compete in more sports than other universities. But would they always have the best average finish across 20 or 30 sports? I doubt it.
Oh, yes, Stanford would certainly still dominate if they calculated the average points. Look at the list of finishes posted by tlo earlier: they are scoring points in almost every single sport (except men's basketball). Michigan has a lot more sports where they didn't score at all than Stanford.
Basketball and hockey will set that back, but still, I live in Mpls and had no idea...
what else do they have besides hockey? Lots of schools win 1 championship, there must be more to the story.
There is more to the story: they made the final four in Women's Volleyball. That's worth another 83 points on top of the 100 for women's hockey.
The rest of their points were from 50-ish each for top-32 finishes in Wrestling, M & W Cross Country, W Soccer, W Swimming and Football (45 points for winning a bowl but finishing outside the top 25).
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which should definitely land us a top 5 spot when the final rankings are done.
Delaney Rulez
It's shameful to me that Michigan doesn't have Women's Ice Hockey! It's Michigan fergodsakes, we are a cold state with such a rich tradition in the sport.