011: Directors' Cup leaders

North Carolina ranks first in the Directors' Cup standings after a successful fall.

Carolina won its 10th field hockey National Title and finished second in women’s soccer this past fall. These two results propelled the Heels to the top spot in the 2022-23 Learfield Directors' Cup standings.

What is the Directors’ Cup?
The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics awards the school with the most athletic success. Athletic departments create graphics like this one (number 68 in the nation!) and administrators even get bonuses based on their school’s finish.

The scoring system is complicated (mind-numbing graphic). It often favors larger schools that offer or support more sports. Stanford won the award 25 years in a row.

The football scoring system is a good example of shenanigans. The top 25 teams receive points based on their final ranking in the Coaches Poll. The 26th place team is a tie between every non-ranked bowl winner, and the after that, it’s a tie between every non-ranked bowl loser. A flawed system.

Nevertheless, let’s take a look at at schools with at least 100 points and compare the football points to the non-football points. The other sports include women’s and men’s soccer, women’s and men’s cross country, women’s volleyball, field hockey, and football.

Through this fall season, Carolina scored 52.5 more points than the second place team (Stanford) and 72.5 more points than the next best ACC school (Syracuse). The Heels scored 67 or more points in four sports - men’s cross country (67.5), women’s cross country (75), women’s soccer (90), and a perfect 100 in field hockey.

While Carolina is known as a basketball school and its football program remains asleep as a giant, the true excellence in its athletic programs is in other sports. This is what makes conference realignment and the every changing landscape of NIL and revenue sharing amongst conferences fascinating to me.

How would Carolina play field hockey, lacrosse, or men’s soccer in the SEC?

Could it compete in different conferences for different sports?

Can Carolina continue to support 28 sports and remain in the ACC? And pay coaches the same rate as other conferences? What about paying players?

Imagine the whole landscape of college sports will look a lot different in 10 years.

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check out the code for this post, and the data from nacdac

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Do you have any ideas or questions about college sports that could be answered with data?

A few research ideas I’m kicking around and haven’t yet figured out, but want to explore in the future:

• college basketball officials pairings with other officials, so trying to riff on kenpom’s “quality” officials metrics

• roster construction (grad transfer, transfer, and high school recruit) amongst different college sports, data is probably most accessible for football and basketball (is it cheaper?)

• college hoops minutes distribution and splits, including by half

Let me know in the comments, and thanks for reading as always.