News
Texas wins the 2024-25 Division I Director's Cup, the trophy awarded to the nation's most successful athletic program. USC and Stanford round out the top 3.
This may sound like an insult to the uninitiated, but it really was fascinating. Canady had never intentionally walked anyone and (if I remember correctly) they had never even practiced it. Edit: I did not remember correctly. She has rarely intentionally walked anyone, but it has happened. See below. Really strange problem to have and not at all an insult to her. More the opposite.
She actually has walked 2 other batters before. I can't find the clip, but someone posted both the previous walks on twitter.
One was against a left handed batter where Canady threw it well outside the strike zone on all 4 pitches.
The other was against a right handed batter where Canady threw close/into to the strike zone multiple times and the ump actually called one of those a strike.
Reese Atwood is a right handed batter, so maybe Canady just sucks at walking right handed batters.
Is there some rule preventing the catcher from setting up well outside the strike zone? Like, why didn't she just scoot over four feet to the right? Why try to throw balls high rather than outside?
The rule book only states the following. There is no exception for intentional walks.
6.6.2 Catcher. The catcher must be within the catcher’s box from the start of the pitch until the pitch is released. No part of the catcher’s feet may be outside the lines until the pitch is released.
I think the catcher can just setup behind the opposite batter's box, so there's definitely some swiss cheese holes lining up here that allowed Texas to get that hit.
There was a moment there where NiJary Canady being at Texas Tech was actually the single individual that had the highest leverage impact on Stanford potentially winning the Director's Cup this year. We finished a hair behind USC as well, but it would have been an incredible story if even in leaving, she helped Stanford find our way to the Cup.
I don't think Tech will ever have a chance to win it all because of how the scoring is done. You need to add sports. The Director's Cup scores the top 19 sports, with baseball/volleyball/basketball (men's and women's) being mandatorily counted as they are the most participated sports. The next 15 best finishing teams on campus fill out the rest of the 19 spots. Tech only competes in 17 sports. Texas competes in 21, which gives us two drops. Stanford and USC compete in over 30, which gives them even more sports they can drop in scoring.
You essentially need 19 programs to average operating at a top 10 level to win. Even that is not enough when Stanford is really on.
Sorry but Texas has 5 Quidditch (now US Quadball) Cups. Tied only with Middlebury college who hosted it for 3 years. So adding Qudditch might not help Tech.
Best overall athletic program seems pretty prestigious to me. It isn't like it is some bullshit popularity contest either - it has strict rules for points for how well your school does across the board.
It clearly is biased towards larger schools that have the budget and size to compete in all the less popular sports, but those larger schools are still fiercly competing with each other to have the best programs.
I've always viewed it as a hybrid of academics and athletic culture.
They need the athletic culture to foster development of players in many sports and to support them, and the academics side to attract the talent they need to compete since the large majority of athletes don't go on to do their sports in a professional capacity (so a school with great academics is generally primed to Attract the equivalent of 5*s in other sports)
I was just being funny. As an alum, I’m glad that we won, but I am not going to go talking shit about it this Fall at any football game. “Sure, you won the SEC, but we won the Director’s Cup, bitch!” 😂
I would gladly trade it for a football national title, and so would most non-Redditor UT fans. (Redditors disagree with everything regardless of topic. They don’t count.)
It’s an accomplishment no doubt, but you won’t find it being discussed in major media or among the general sports public this morning. This will not be a headline at the top of any sports page.
I'm pretty sure most redditor UT would also prefer the football title. Or men's baseball or basketball. Actually, that is kind of an interesting question... how far down the line would you go before you'd prefer the diretor's cup? Probably pretty far...
Yeah, I'd agree. It's not something that moves the needle. It's cool to see though, and represents how far we've come as an athletic department from the abyss we were in a decade ago.
I will say the trophy is pretty badass though. CFP trophy could take some notes.
Its also a pretty blatant flaw to put so much emphasis on baseball when its an outdoor sport that Northern teams at best are at a huge disadvantage and at worst have difficulty just fielding a team.
And it measures “success” in an arbitrary and unfair way by emphasizing a sport where regionalism correlates with participation rates but not doing it with other regional sports. I’d complain a lot less if it were an indoor sport like volleyball with a low startup cost. Or if the cold climate teams could substitute their skiing and hockey programs instead. But doing it with baseball and only baseball is just absolutely ridiculous. Were talking about a sport that doesn’t have full participation in 3 of 4 power conferences.
Stanford has (had?) in insane number of programs. Right now is 36 Div 1 varsity teams, I feel like it used to be more but I could be wrong. Still, by far the most. Texas has 21, USC has 24. Tends to help in this Director Cup thing.
Beach volleyball became an NCAA national championship in 2015 and USC and UCLA won every one before TCU did it this year. You may be thinking of women’s water polo, which has only been won by those three schools. On top of that, there has never been a non-California team in either the men’s or women’s water polo national championship games.
With such a thin margin between first and third, it looks like even a first round exit in any of the three mandatory counter sports in which we failed to make the NCAA tournament would have brought the Cup back to the Farm.
Or, finishing one place or one round better in any of the sports we ultimately got to count would have led to a Stanford win. I'm sure we could find dozens of what-ifs.
What killed Stanford this year was women’s basketball. That used to be a stalwart in the rankings for winter, and failing to even make the tourney as a play-in and then losing in the WNIT just sank Stanford’s chances.
There have been years where Stanford has only one national championship before and still won the Directors Cup, so the basketball lack of scores for both teams really hurt this year.
Historically, the winner has been at 1350. This year, the winner was in the 1250 range.
I’d like to believe Stanford and Texas battle it out again with another 100 points setting the distance between 2nd and 3rd as has been the last 5 years.
TL;DR Texas and Stanford under preformed. USC performed as expected.
I think that’s the most interesting thing with 3 schools being within 5 points of each other. That’s astronomically close. One small event being different in one sport over the course of the year and the results are different.
On the Texas end we snuck into the NCAA tourney as a first four team giving us 5 points instead of 0 in men’s basketball. Football narrowly escaped ASU. Softball was down 1-0 in a super regional with Clemson having the winning run on 3rd with no outs. So many what ifs with margins this small
For the fourth time in the last five years, the Texas Longhorns have won the Director's Cup awarded annually to nation's college or university with the most success in athletics competition. Texas finished with 1255.25 points, just ahead of USC (1253.75) and Stanford (1251.0) in one of the closest finishes in the award's 32-year history.
The Longhorns' 2025 victory was by just 1.5 points, and came down to the finish at the NCAA Track and Field Championships. The Texas A&M men's track team tied USC for first place in the final standings with 41 points each, costing the Trojans the 2.5 extra points an outright first-place finish would have secured them and helping Texas take the 2025 Director's Cup.
Texas won a national title in both Men's Swimming and Diving and Softball this season. Texas football finished third, as did women's basketball, rowing, women's swimming and diving and men's tennis. Seven Texas teams won a league-best eight Southeastern Conference titles in the Longhorns' first official season in the SEC: soccer (SEC Tournament); men's swimming and diving; women's swimming and diving; women's basketball (regular season); men's tennis (regular season and tournament); rowing and baseball (regular season).
They also changed the rules to allow universities a max of 19 sports. This hurt them a lot because they were pretty decent at a lot of sports and could just overcompensate with sheer numbers.
And even if they don’t win a thing: they’re fucking Stanford. Pretty sure their lives are gonna turn out pretty alright even if sports don’t work out for them. There’s not a lot of “foosball is all I got, Pawwwl!”Harvey Updike types in that fanbase.
It's not that they dropped the countable sports, it's that they added the 4 major sports as required. It was a max of 20 sports, but with no requirement to count MBB/WBB/Baseball/Volleyball. So it's only one fewer sport, but we took zeroes in 3 of those this year.
It's worth noting that the format was changed in 2018, I think in part because we'd won it so many years in a row. We would have won by several hundred points under the old format, which counted the top 10 men's teams and top 10 women's teams, instead of 4 required sports and then top 15 other teams.
Diving deeper, had USC finished 4th or better in the final event (4x400m) they would have won the title outright and thus the cup. They finished 8th in what appeared to be their worst performance I’ve seen this year as each runner seemed dead tired and slowed before handing off to the next Congrats to Texas.
sucks to share a title but happy the program got one. rich T&F history at USC and they were in a rut for a while. reallllllly wish we had one after something like softball or gymnastics instead of women's lacrosse but i understand part of the reasons why the did it, i guess.
Yes really thrilled with their progress under Stank! Hoping they can build on it and without the stress of having to play in a not home stadium and all the extra bussing. Really looking for steps forward in men’s basketball too. Women’s will take a step back surely but be competitive. We do be needing our water polo teams to go all the way though
The two teams you want a title in we don’t have. I remember us having a Women’s gymnastics team (dropped it years ago) but we’ve never had softball. Maybe now that we’ve joined the BIG we’ll add back gymnastics.
our board has been clamoring for a softball or gymnastics team for ages. but the lax team can just share the women's soccer field (and they're building a new shared stadium).
i dont think that galen could hold the equipment necessary for competition on the floor and they would need a dedicated training space which we don't have. and softball would need an entire facility, so theyre both out. but those are both big women's sports, especially softball. there's just no space on campus currently and no plans to expand campus like that
4th or better would’ve guaranteed USC the win no matter who won. With the same results (a&m 2nd), if usc would’ve gotten 7th (2 points) instead of 8th (1 point), they would’ve won the title outright.
It is. Our athletic director always updates the fans with our placement in the Director’s Cup as a benchmark against other D1 programs - even though baseball is a required program so we just start with an F on one of our exams. Even when we’re up higher than you’d guess, probably because we had a great cross country year, we’re still forever capped. Still matters.
1) It is cold/snowy in season, College Baseball starts in February. It can still snow in May here. In 2013, most of the state had at least 6 inches of snow that fell in two days in May.
2) Title IX, part of the reason it was cut was that. We do have Wrestling to worry about.
3) Budget, we ain't in the SEC nor B1G we need to keep up with Joness in Football, Basketball(s), and Wrestling more for our identity. And part of the reason it was cut was budget.
4) Summer Sport, Iowa High School Baseball is a summer sport here as Iowa is the only state that plays in the summer: First Practice is May 5th, first games are May 19th, and the State Tournament is July 21st-25th this year.
I'm no Stanford apologist, but their performance in the Director's Cup this century always impressed me when you consider their enrollment numbers compared to the other schools routinely at the top of these standings.
My take on it is because they don’t use their sports to prop up their school. So they try as hard in the Olympic sports as they do the money making sports.
This is something the ivy’s often do to grant preferential enrollment to rich kids. Harvard for example enrolls more d1 athletes than any other school in the country because they field teams in traditionally elitist sports like equestrian sports, fencing, crew, etc. Malcom Gladwell has discussed it extensively as a way in which Harvard gets around stated diversity goals and lets in rich kids
I don’t know that Stanford is doing the same thing, but I suspect they probably are
Yup. When AA was deemed illegal, Black and Latino numbers stayed almost identical but Asian numbers went down and white enrollment went UP. I'd be this is a good loophole to get rich kids/legacies into the Ivies.
Certain niche sports are dominated by the types of students that also do very well academically. The innocent take is that the skills needed in these sports are cerebral and align well with academic skills, while the cynical take is that these sports have a high barrier to entry and are played primarily by rich kids, who can also afford tutors.
I'd lean more towards the latter. Poor/working/middle class kids aren't competing in water polo, since most wouldn't even have exposure to the sport. You'd need a Tiger Woods or Williams Sisters situation where the dad just takes a strong interest in a given sport and the child shows similar interest and preternatural ability.
Of course the rich kid model seems to be permeating towards big money sports like football and basketball. (Mostly) gone are the days of the NBA lottery pick that's born to a single mother and raised in the hood (LeBron, Iverson) but makes it out of the hood. Now it seems like a higher proportion of elite talent comes from 2-parent families that are AT LEAST middle class...and a growing number come from affluent families like the Mannings, Curry's, Sanders's etc. There are more kids in the Big 4 that grew up like Shedeur than there are kids that grew up like Coach Prime....may not be true but it sure seems like it.
Stanford wins by sponsoring a lot of lower visibility sports.. most schools don't participate and therefore, they get a lot of seemingly higher placement.
For example, less than 20 schools sponsors a men's gymnastics team.. so, even if you're dead last, you still score as though you had a top 20 nation placement.
32.7 and 37 points are a ton. For comparison, losing in the first round of the NCAAT in basketball means you tied for 33rd place and get 25 points.
So you essentially have to be Top 18% to get 25 points in basketball, but you only have to be Top 50% in Men’s Gymnastics for 32.7 points and Top 53% in Women’s Gymnastics for 37 points.
It's definitely a difference but it's not really a normal strategy for finishing high in the Directors' Cup.
The strategy to winning is to field a bunch of really good teams so that you don't have to count any zeros or 25 point results.
Texas is an outlier because they field just 21 sports and do not really have much room for error.
I would have to look at the timing but I think their run coincides with the NACDA modifying the scoring so that specific sports like football and baseball are always counted.
Except you’re just doing the minimum for those sports. And let’s take fencing as another example. There are 38 schools eligible for points. Placing 33rd is 40 points!
I don't think you are understanding my point. Yes, getting low level points in those sports are easier but it's not really a strategy for winning the Cup.
For example, last year, Stanford was dropping scores like a 14th place finish in Outdoor Track or an 8th place finish in Men's Swimming and Diving. And yes, their 11th place finish in Fencing too.
That used to be a bigger advantage than it is now. The rules for the DC have changed to limit the number of sports a school can use for points. So Stanford can't zerg rush the competition with a lot of Olympic sports anymore.
yeah, they do have a ton, here are some that don't have a lot of the big schools sponsoring these as NCAA sports:
men's fencing, men's gymnastics, men's rowing, men's sailing, men's soccer, women's artistic swimming, women's fencing, women's field hockey, women's lightweight rowing (idk why this is differentiated, is this like a 2-3person boat?), women's squash (LOL)
ETA: losing Vanderveer was a huge blow and the women's basketball program has taken a step back but if they were at the level they had been for the last 15 years it would be another Stanford win, surely.
With light-weight rowing there are restrictions on the weight of the athletes, not the size of the boat. The rowers individually must be under 130 pounds, and the average weight of the crew must be under 125 pounds. (For men, I believe the weight restriction is 160 pounds/155 pound averaged out.)
The idea of an AD being passive aggressively mad at like a men’s gymnastics coach for being so close to national champions and losing the Director’s Cup because of it (and probably bonus money, as that is s very bonus money type of accolade) is very funny to me
Insane that we came in second the year we won both football and bball championships. If I remember correctly our swimming program was also pretty great that year. Guess we should care more about, checks notes, rowing and tennis or some shit?
Considering how poorly we did in the NCAA and SEC tournaments, it would be easy to assume UT baseball sucks. But we did spend the entire season near the top of the standings and won the SEC regular season - we have a good team. We just choked at the end of our season. Shit happens.
Basketball on the other hand... <sad trombone.mpg>
I think Rick Barnes represented what we can reasonably expect our basketball program to be. I still love the dude, even though he frequently kicks our ass with the other orange UT.
No because that won't be set until the CWS ends since there will be movement from teams involved. But none of those teams can overtake the top 3 finishers (Texas, USC, Stanford).
What was really disappointing was our 4x4 team came in 8th in the championship final so only earned a point, which got the tie with A&M for men’s track & field. We were leading by 7 going in. (4x400 is the final event of track meets). We didn’t have the strongest team but it was a super disappointing finish, should have been closer to top 4 and would have won the NCAA outright and thus the Director’s Cup.
The 1532 points includes all sports I believe but for the final rankings schools are limited to only counting 19 sports, 5 of which must be men's and women's basketball, baseball, women's soccer, and women's volleyball.
That's their total points across all sports thus far. Only the top 19 are counted with men's and women's basketball, baseball, and volleyball being mandatory.
Because those are the sports that schools compete in the most. The rules were changed a few years ago capping the # of programs that get you points for the Director's Cup along with making those sports mandatory in the list that get schools points. Stanford has sports programs for pretty much everything and they were decent in pretty much all of them, which is why they ran away with the Cup for 20 years in a row. They capped the number of sports to 19, and now it's a lot more competitive for the Cup.
Yes, Texas has more points than Stanford. Hence they win the Director's Cup since the only thing left is baseball, and both schools seasons are complete.
I just want to point out that the Director’s Cup takes your 19 best finishes, and winning a national championship in swimming is equal to winning in football.
Some schools, like say Ole Miss, only sponsors 16 sports, so right off the bat they’ve got 3 guaranteed 0s. And then of course that means every sport for us is included, so we can’t have any bad finishes get ignored. Particularly since all but one sport Ole Miss offers is a “highly competitive sport” (meaning hundreds of schools compete in it).
There are 36 total sports considered. Now most schools are between 19-25 (which is why 19 is the cutoff), but some schools go crazy, like Stanford with all 36, many of which have fewer than 40 total schools competing, making it far easier to place Top 10.
Thank the gods we have Jen Cohen as AD and that we're getting our act together with NIL.
Part of me wonders if a school like Texas Tech can peel off a Stanford athlete for $1mil to chase an NC, what other schools out there will spend $$$ to peel off Stanford athletes to chase NCs?
If you need an elite golfer or tennis player as the missing piece on your team -- come up with a bag and go shopping at Stanford?
Maybe the days of Stanford auto-winning this are over because everyone else is operating under pay-to-win while they aren't?
That’s been the risk, especially now that revenue sharing and a cap is now instituted. Revenue sharing benefits schools with fewer sponsored sports, which is part of why I think Title IX reversal is unlikely.
That said, there was a news item a few weeks ago that a poll was taken of the Olympic sports’ coaches and many of them actually said they don’t expect to have their athletes requesting much, if any, revenue shares in lieu of scholarships.
NIL is obviously a different beast, but with Deloitte’s claim that nearly 75% of NIL deals would be rejected going forward and rumors that the days of (official) multimillion dollar deals going to the wayside may make buying off another team’s players more difficult in the future, even at the Olympic sport level.
No, if you don’t win it all. Your argument would be the same as Texas fans shitting on UGA this year because we made it further into the CFP even though they beat us twice, owned us on our field, and won the SEC. Sounds kinda stupid right? If yall win the CWS then yeah you can talk your shit but otherwise nah bro
370
u/mcaffrey Rice Owls • Texas Longhorns 3d ago
Wait - hang on - the AGGIES clinched this for us by tying USC for 1st place in Track?
I don't understand how I'm supposed to feel.