Michigan second in latest Director's Cup standings
Coming off a strong winter season UM has moved up to #2 behind Stanford in the latest Directors' Cup. Given how strong we look in softball, baseball and other spring sports this will clearly be a great year for UM's sports.
Who has it better than us?!
http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/nacda/sports/directorscup/auto_pdf/…
OP walked right into that one.
Out of curiosity, why is it that no other team can even compete with Stanford for the director's cup?
That's pretty dumb. Seems like this award rewards quantity of sports over quality of sports.
The score takes your top ten men's finishes and top ten women's finishes. So yes, they have more sports, but they're also good at them.
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True, but they don't have a finish outside of the top 20 so far this year.
But considering we, and say schools like Texas, have vastly bigger athletic budgets, not sure why we can't compete and/or have just as many sports as they do.
Stanford's AD is heavily subsidized. We don't have that option, and as I understand it, and I don't think I would really want the AD to draw funds from the rest of the school anyway.
I am not doubting that, but I would still find it hard to believe that we do not have a larger AD budget then they do, regardless of the source of funding. If someone has some figures on Stanford's budget, that would help shed some light on the issue.
Oh, maybe I wasn't getting your point. Not published, but this second-hand source puts their AD budget at about $100 million, so you'd be right about that. So your question is why are our teams so expensive to field, compared to Stanford?
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/02/22/the-price-of-athletics-at-stanf…
Edit: was just looking around their athletics page and it appears the sports they have and we lack are 1) mostly women's and 2) small (and probably cheap), like fencing, beach volleyball, squash, and sailing. I'm not sure Michigan would be a great spot for either beach v-ball or sailing, though they could make it work.
This is our beach volleyball team from the 60's before we gave it up. The season started in January.
Perhaps it's not all about the money? I know...crazy.
is DB?
S/
But this is an area DB did make progress in (upgrading facilities for all men's and women's sports). The steam shovels are making good progress on South State street as we speak.
The timeline is 1) get good coach 2) fix up facilities 3) attract top recruits 4) win more. OSU went on a roll a few years after they did all their facility upgrades.
DB also foolishly fired many non revenue sport's coaches and that didn't help "his record".
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No one beats Stanford. Everyone else just competes for silver
For those who are in sports that have no professional leagues or not much for income, I can totally get why they would go to get a Stanford degree over most other degrees. Good weather, good connections, and great post school job offers.
Looking at those winter standings, how much money would be needed to fund a competitive Rifle team?
Track, I can understand that it would be hard to compete against warm weather Universities.
Zero points for Winter. #45
Isn't it a matter of financing? Like, Michigan can't just add a bunch of net loss sports, because as I understand it, all varsity programs have to be completely funded through the AD. But the Stanford AD takes in about 66% less sports revenue than it spends. Maybe that's obvious.
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Women's hockey would be costly because Michigan needs another practice rink (biggest reason Red was against it). Adding a fencing program seems like a no brainer. It can't be that expensive to buy some swords, jackets and masks.
Gone are the days of traveling by bus and only playing within 300 miles of home.
Look at the non revenue sports and the competition they play all over the US, and it's not hard to see that this is not sustainable, if the TV contracts become less lucrative.
Fencing can be quite entertaining
Adding a slew of money hole sports to beat Stanford for an imaginary championship? I'd rather us spend money on making football, basketball, and hockey better than wasting it on adding a men's equestrian team or women's underwater basket weaving
The "Director's Cup" is an arbitrary weighted summation.
It's the joy experienced in the individual sport that is real and matters. Adding sports for the sake of the Director's Cup would be like spending real money on MGoPoints. Yeah, it might be a shallow conversation topic, but that's about it.
That said..he did do those two things and I couldn't be happier he is gone. #harbaugh
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The Director's cup. No idea why it was there
It helps to get 100 points in a sport only five other schools play.
Stanford is the New York Yankees of the Director's Cup. Near unbeatable.
They did beat OSU in the synchronized swimming nation championship match so it's not all doom and gloom.
Its more like Stanford is the UConn WBB of the ... wait now I'm confusing myself, UConn is competing for the Cup too, but.... nevermind.
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I'd like to point out to the Rutgers (#54) haters that 4 B1G teams are behind them in these standings:
Iowa #55
Northwestern #63
Illinois #72
Maryland #92
Beating those 4 schools isn't exactly a huge victory is it? It's not like they subtract points for complete ineptitude in sports right? If they did that'd be interesting.
OMG, so one of our biggest football rivals is #72, how can that be???
which is absolutely stunning, I was shocked when I saw that score.
Given RU's fairly good OOC performance and their win over JHU, they are a viable contender to win B1G lacrosse this spring. Not yet the favorite (that's still Maryland), but they will be in the picture.
I know - Rutgers is no joke. I wasn't totaly surprised they beat Hopkins but a little surprised by the score. Good W for Rutgers.
I'm going to predict that M wins at least one Big Ten game this year . Conference play should be interesting even if they don't.
Too bad lacrosse isn't better at this point. I would love to see them help contribute to these rankings!