New rankings out including T&F. A&M jumps from 20th to 11th.

Looks like the bad kids from Austin will finish higher for the first time in awhile this year with just baseball left. We will gain some baseball points but tu will score even more.

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/nacda/sports/directorscup/auto_pdf/2013-14/misc_non_event/June19DI.pdf

I think we should get about 50 points in baseball to end up with 1022 points. I don't think Michigan in 10th place would get any points from baseball, so we should end up ahead of them in 10th place.

Yeah the sips should get significant points in baseball since they are in championship match and may push them further up the standings.

We are always at a disadvantage because we don't have full 20 sports (10 men and 10 women. Other schools like Stanford and Florida have more than 20 and could have afford to leave out some of the points from sports they don't perform very well.
Should we consider adding a couple of sports?

We are at a disadvantage vs. Stanford, but not against most other large schools including Texas.

Adding sports is tough because the SEC doesn't have much else - just gymnastics.

Mens swimming under-performed for A&M this year. And of course so did mens basketball.

Spice
I don't know much about gymnastics. Only watch it at Olympic time
Can we then consider adding Gymnastics some time in the future? Aren't there any good Texas gymnastics program that we can get recruits from? How many school in D1 takes part in gymnastics? Maybe it might be a sport that we can definitely score points in

What about hockey? I know we have team that competes at a lower division.
What about Lacrosse?


Florida takes part in gymnastics and Lacrosse so they have two sports more than us.

Texas competes in rowing as well

I know a bit about age group gymnastics because my daughter competed for a good while. But I don't know much about NCAA gymnastics.

If we don't care about SEC support (or it doesn't matter), I'd add mens wrestling and womens lacrosse. I don't have an especially good reason for this other than I think wrestling fits the attitude and culture of A&M. Lacrosse is popular in high schools, including in Texas. Wrestling is being added to many Texas high school programs. Water polo is another worth considering. A&M used to have a water polo team - one of the best outside California.

Rifle is also an NCAA sport - and that seems like something A&M would do well in. Seems like an inexpensive sport also.

UF started lacrosse five years ago and has been to at least the elite 8 four of those years, it got us 70 points in the directors cup this year. We were competing in a conference with ohio state, Vandy, Johns Hopkins, NW and PSU, but the big 10 can add their own league now with Maryland and Rutgers coming in, so we will probably be in the big east next year, and until enough conference teams start programs.
Womens Gymnastics is a sport the SEC excels in, UF has won the last two national championships and Alabama and Georgia combined probably have 15 or more between them.
If directors cup points are what you are looking for, they are both good sports.

Also, UF has 21 programs, but only 9 in men's, so we are at a bit of a disadvantage too.

Unless something changed in the past couple years we still have a (non-varsity) water polo team that is competitive and goes to cwpa national championship tournament (club division) with relative frequency (we went twice during my 4 years).

The structure of water polo is similar to lacrosse and rugby where there are a few programs that are varsity / NCAA (usually regionally based, eg California for WP, NE for lacrosse). The rest of the country competes at the club level due in part to title IX (not trying to start that debate, just saying that it is a contributing factor, as these sports were varsity back in the 70s in many cases, such as water polo at tamu). These club teams range in competitiveness, but the usual suspects compete at a high level, probably roughly on par with solid DII varsity programs in major sports. This is just my view from experience, so take it with a grain of salt.

Probably way more of an explanation than is needed, but that is essentially why we won't add an NCAA sport on the men's side any time soon.

Actually, one of the things the SEC could help happen without spending a nickle on new sports is to get equestrian added to the director's cup list of women's sports. That it isn't is ridiculous given some of the other sports that do count. That would be the 11th women's sport for A&M, but given our usual success would help replace a low point total in another one. Typically, for instance, we haven't scored well in women's cross country.

Adding another sport also involves keeping the scholarships properly balanced between men's and women's sports. I don't know all the ramifications, but we really need another men's sport to get to 10, and that would probably require adding another women's sport.

Despite all the criticism leveled at Byrne, he really seemed to be concerned with all sports and advancing in the director's cup. Hyman doesn't appear to have that passion.

Given everything, we haven't done badly this year. We've been bailed out point wise by the indoor and outdoor track teams. I'm not sure anyone else had an outstanding year, although several had good years.

Yep. I believe W swimming tied their highest place ever with 4th place at NCAA. that is 80 points. Then I think we had a solid group in the next tier, eg w bball elite 8, w soccer 9, w tennis 9, w golf 10. Then a pretty big drop off.

No points in either men's basketball or men's cross country - so the men's side is really hampered.

Stanford wins this all the time partially because they usually do fairly well in everything but also they field so many teams that in case one does poorly, there is a better score to replace it. Stanford fields 15 men's and 15 women's teams and all but 2 (field hockey and softball) scored points.

I'm not sure what the talent pools are like, but I would think men's volleyball and soccer would be the easiest sports to add (facilities-wise). Of course, I agree that the SEC should keep pushing for NCAA sponsorship of equestrian or somehow convince the Directors' Cup people to count it. Men's equestrian would not seem to hard to add as well, in that case (or compete as a mixed team like in NCAA fencing/skiing/rifle).

Even with a seemingly "down" year, A&M should still finish in the Top 10.

Thanks guys. Great analysis and summaries.

I turned on the TV on ESPN this morning and the NCAA gymnastics championship repeat was on. I got a little more insight into NCAA gymnastics. Several of the athletes were from the state of Texas

12 teams make NCAA tournament. Six of these then make the championship finals with Florida and Oklahoma winning the finals.

There are seven team in the SEC competing gymnastics Alabama, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Arkansas, Auburn and Kentucky. All ranked in the top 25
Four SEC teams made the NCAA championship finals Alabama, Florida, Georgia, LSU.

In the Director's Cup all seven SEC scored with the lowest score of 46.5 points for Auburn (25th)

I had just thought that equestrian was just really a lot smaller than some of those other sports that count. I might not be familiar with skiing or fencing, but I could see how a bunch of schools could have a program and I would never know. But actually when I look at the numbers, that isn't true.

For D1

18 Equestrian
14 Skiing
23 Rifle
16 Men's gymnastics
24 Fencing

If men's gymnastics and skiing count, I have no idea why Equestrian doesn't.

I think for some of those sports there are no divisions. I want to say men's gymnastics for example has both DI and DIII schools. Do your counts include just D1 schools or did you count every team that competes?

And as for equestrian, it won't count until the NCAA sponsors its championship. But if they sponsor fencing (A&M actually won SWC fencing championships waaaaay back in the day), I think they should sponsor equestrian.

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If men's gymnastics and skiing count, I have no idea why Equestrian doesn't.

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Because all those other sports have been around forever and the NCAA has always sponsored them. Equestrian is the 'new' kid on the block and they don't want to bring it in unless there is a larger amount of schools sponsoring it. Unfortunately for us, equestrian will never grow much more than where it is now. It's been stuck around the 20 mark for well over a decade and if anything has lost a few schools since their initial push to make it an NCAA sport.

Unless Title IX goes away, we won't ever add any male sports. Many of the other women's sports suggested on this thread are quite expensive, gymnastics prime among them (insurance/facility/equipment cost). The only move I could ever see A&M making is dumping equestrian to bring in an already established NCAA sport. That said we've been very successful at equestrian and now have this marquee facility so I highly doubt it is going anywhere.

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Despite all the criticism leveled at Byrne, he really seemed to be concerned with all sports and advancing in the director's cup.

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If you saw his contract, you'd understand why.

[This message has been edited by Look Out Below (edited 6/25/2014 9:59a).]

We could easily spend a little less on football and fund two new sports - one for men and one for women. How about water polo for men and beach volleyball for women?

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We could easily spend a little less on football and fund two new sports - one for men and one for women. How about water polo for men and beach volleyball for women?

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It would be pretty hard for our AD to justify that. We are already outspent in football by a number of our conference opponents, our instate rival, and a handful of major programs across the nation. What you would need is for the major conferences to get together and decided that everybody has to have at least x male and y female sports to see an increase in sports teams. If everyone else has to add as well, we wouldn't be at a disadvantage in football by adding it.

I don't think that will happen though. There is plenty of money there to add more sports, but it looks like we are committed to a future of spending more of it on football (player salaries, cost of living stipends, waterfalls in locker rooms, etc.).


As for men's water polo and women's beach volleyball, I think you are going to need to see the women's scholarship numbers at least as high as the men's in that kind of swap. Men's water polo have 4.5 while women's beach volleyball has 3.

Finished The Learfield Sports Director's Cup in the top 10!

http://thedirectorscup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/june26stand.pdf

We finished about 50 points behind Texas. We were letdown by mens basketball (0 points) and mens cross country (0 points). Mens swimming had its worst finish in a long time. Hopefully that is behind us.

^^Considering we were handicapped virtually two teams then that's not bad at all finishing in the top 10, regardless of who we are behind. Just got to continue to be a more well rounded athletic program.

We should just cut Men's BB and start fielding something we can actually win in on the men's side.