For the 16th consecutive year, Stanford ended its athletic campaign as the best sports program in the country by winning the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup.
The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) joined with USA Today to create the Directors’ Cup award in 1993-1994 in order to reward the school with the best intercollegiate athletics program. In 2008, Learfield Sports became the official sponsor of the award, which has grown to give awards for Division II, Division III and NAIA.
Points are awarded to teams based on each team’s finish in the final tournament or standings for the respective sport. The school’s total is calculated by summing scores from the 10 best men’s teams and 10 best women’s teams.
After finishing second to the University of North Carolina in the inaugural Directors’ Cup standings, Stanford has gone on to win the award every year since. In recent years, the Cardinal’s wins have been substantial. In 2007-08, Stanford defeated second-place UCLA by 279 points. In 2008-09, Stanford won by 270.75 points over North Carolina, its closest competitor. For a point of reference, this gap was about the same as the gap between second and 15th place.
“We don’t really have much of a strategy as it pertains to the Directors’ Cup,” said Athletics Director Bob Bowlsby. “It’s really sort of a sum of the parts. And every one of our sports is trying to compete at the highest level they possibly can. And at the end of the year we’ve been fortunate to have it add up to Directors’ Cup championships.”
Following comfortable wins in each of the past few years, this year’s Cardinal program set a new standard. Stanford’s current total of 1508.5 is the highest total for any Division-I program in the 17-year history of the Directors’ Cup. The scores are not yet final because baseball’s points have yet to be added from the College World Series. Those final scores will be released today. However, the order of the top three teams will not change in the final standings, and no team’s point total will drop. The University of Florida came in a distant second to Stanford, scoring 1237.25 points without baseball’s points. Virginia placed third with 1189.25, followed by UCLA at 1034 and Texas A&M at 1020.75.
“We score in more than the 10 men’s sports and the 10 women’s sports that are tabulated in the rankings,” Bowlsby said. “And so we have the luxury of throwing out some of the sports that are lower scoring or where we don’t score at all. Having a lot of sports certainly is an advantage.”
The Cardinal had another successful year across all sports, leading to another runaway Directors’ Cup victory. Stanford was led by its three national championship teams: men’s volleyball, women’s tennis and women’s lightweight rowing. However, lightweight rowing is not an NCAA sport, so it did not count for the Directors’ Cup. Men’s volleyball and women’s tennis helped continue Stanford’s national record of consecutive years with an NCAA title, which now sits at 34.
Along with these championships, Stanford received great contributions from a number of sports. The Cardinal placed second in five women’s sports – soccer, basketball, swimming, water polo and synchronized swimming – as well as men’s gymnastics.
In total, nine Stanford sports were ranked No. 1 in the nation at some point in the year, and 20 of the 35 teams finished in the top 10 nationally. Florida finished second with a school-record 14 top-10 teams.
“I think we’re always faced with discussions about quality versus quantity,” Bowlsby said. “But we’ve been able to maintain high quality with a very broad-based program and I’d expect to do that in the future as well.”
The Cardinal’s breadth of quality shone on the individual side as well. Sophomore Bradley Klahn won the singles title in men’s tennis, and the women’s doubles crown went to junior Hilary Barte and senior Lindsay Burdette. Senior Carly Janiga won a national title in the uneven bars, while junior Ryan Lieberman and freshman Eddie Penev won national titles in the parallel bars and vault, respectively. Seniors Kelley O’Hara, Kawika Shoji and Julia Smit were named National Player of the Year in women’s soccer, men’s volleyball and women’s swimming, respectively.
Three Stanford coaches were named National Coach of the Year -Paul Ratcliffe for women’s soccer, John Kosty for men’s volleyball and Al Acosta for women’s lightweight rowing.
“We don’t build a lot of our strategy around trying to win the Directors’ Cup,” Bowlsby said, “but we certainly are glad to win it and we want each of our sports to achieve at a high level – and ultimately that results in the Cup.”
Eric Messinger contributed to this report.