25-26 Director's Cup Thread

[DirectorsCupUpdates]

Chris Del Conte and the Texas Longhorn put a bow on the 24-25 athletic season during halftime of the Longhorns game against San Jose State by accepting a newly designed (and thankfully crystal once again) Director's Cup Trophy. This marked the 4th time the Longhorns have secured this award in the last 5 years.

It is now time to turn our attention fully to the 25-26 athletic season and that is what I hope to do in this thread. While Football puts the F in OTF, the Longhorns boast many successful programs on the 40 and we will highlight those here in this thread. Any sport that isn't covered in detail elsewhere on the forum will be covered here. I don't claim to be an expert in all 20 of these sports but will do my best to bring the news to the thread and add any flavor beyond that as I am able. If you have a good understanding of a sport discussed here, please feel free to add your input and become our local expert, it would be greatly appreciated.

I'll also use this thread to post Director's Cup scoring updates, predictions and other info related to the Cup. I hope you all enjoy following along through the year as Texas goes after their 5th Cup!

 

[DirectorsCupUpdates]

What is the Director's Cup?

The Director's Cup is an award presented to the collegiate athletic department that achieves the highest level of success across a variety of sports, both men's and women's, during the academic year. Points are awarded, from 5-100 points, based on each teams placement in the NCAA sponsored championship competition for each sport. Failure to be included in the NCAA sponsored championship competition equates to 0 points score. The champion in each sport is awarded 100 points and the points beyond that vary based on the size of the bracket or number of teams included in the competition. Each school can include points scored by 19 different teams, regardless of gender. 5 of the 19 teams included must be Volleyball, W Soccer, W Basketball, M Basketball and Baseball. After those 5 sports are included, the next highest 14 scores are used to determine the final score. 

History

The Director's Cup was started in the 93-94 season by USA Today and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and continues with these relationships today with the addition of Learfield as a corporate sponsor. In the inaugural season, The University of North Carolina won the cup while Stanford finished in 2nd place. Stanford would then go on to win the next 25 Director's Cup until Texas won their first during the 20-21 season. Texas would win a second cup during the 21-22 season with Stanford winning by a thin margin in 22-23. Texas has since gone back to back once again winning the Cup in 23-24 and 24-25.

The original scoring system differed from the one described above. For the first 25 years schools could include points from their top 10 men's sports and top 10 women's sports which would be added together to give the grand total score. This system made it very challenging for schools with smaller departments, including Texas, to outright win the cup. In 1993 Texas had 9 Men's sports and 8 Women's Sports. In the early 2000s sports like W Soccer, Rowing and Softball had been added on the Women's side but Texas still did not field 10 Men's teams. The scoring system was changed to the current system for the 2017-18 season and the move away from gender specific scoring, decreasing the number of sports from 20 to 19 and adding required sports has made the cup more competitive (at least slightly). Texas would have won only 1 Director's Cup under the old scoring system.

[horns96]

Thanks for posting here @DirectorsCupUpdates🤘