Frankly, as much as you hear the Director's Cup trumpeted as some kind of fair measure of school-wide athletic accomplishment, it's a deeply flawed and well-nigh meaningless award that pretends that a sport like men's water polo, competed in by a tiny handful of exclusively left coast schools, is as important as multi-billion dollar cutthroat battle royale like football or men's basketball. Until NACDA devises a scoring system that weights the competitiveness and importance of each sport accordingly, the award is a trifle that schools and fans should best ignore, or take with the kind of grains of salt that ...
WOOOOOOOOO!!! Yeaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!! In your face, Tide! In. Your. Face. You can't handle it. You're not even close to handling it. You just take your balls of various sizes and shapes from all the various sports in which you failed like the giant pile of FAIL you are and go the hell home. WAR EAGLE, bitches.
War.
Damn.
Eagle.
(Seriously, if you looked at SEC-only Cup standings, Auburn finished sixth. Not bad, and serious congratulations to teams like men's swimming, men's track and field, etc. that helped Auburn reach that high. But there's still a lot of work to do--no reason Auburn ought to finish behind Tennessee or Arkansas.)
10 comments:
Wow. That might be one of the funniest posts I've read on here in a while, and that's saying a lot.
You guys keep swimming. That's what you're good at...
heh, I gotta second what Walt said for enthusiasm.
But you can't have it both ways, Jerry. If you're going to dis Stanford for water polo, then we can't give kudos to Auburn for Olympic most athletes produced.
And our swimmers are legend. Um, Bama has a decent girls gymnastics team, as are the GymDawgs. But overall, Auburn has a nicely productive and well-rounded athletics program.
Walt: thanks.
Anon.: al.com is thataway, buddy.
KFP: Thanks, but I didn't actually dis Stanford for its water polo program, did I? Yeah, I do think it's a little silly that sports with 20-or-so DI entrants like water polo count as much with SACDA as a sport with 300-plus entrants like men's hoops, but that doesn't mean I really think Stanford (or Florida) shouldn't be proud of what they've accomplished in this competition ... and I think Auburn still has some obvious areas for improvement I'd like to see them make (men's golf, softball, I'd like the volleyball team to finish in the top half of the SEC sometime this lifetime, etc.)
Jerry, I am referring to this passage:
"...it's a deeply flawed and well-nigh meaningless award that pretends that a sport like men's water polo, competed in by a tiny handful of exclusively left coast schools, is as important as multi-billion dollar cutthroat battle royale like football or men's basketball."
Is it your intent to equate intrinsic value with revenue producing potential? I mean, that's a perfectly valid take on the subject. But then it negates the "purist" approach about the "noble striving to seek out and reach man's full potential" kind of tree-hugging philosophy which has its place "within these hallowed ivy-covered walls", etc., etc.
God damn Florida grand slame home run in the WCWS
God damn UGA Gymnastics
oh well, we still kicked your ass in football, and you still lost to vandy last year
Recently I stumbled on a ranking of schools by NCAA recognized national championships. It was pretty eye opening, in that Arkansas cleaned house. They had like 7, to AU's 4 or so. I think Bama had 2 or 3. Anyway, wish I could find it, but Google is letting me down right now.
KFP, that passage is intended to help set up the passage after the screengrab. As I said, winning a title against 20 other schools maybe shouldn't count for the same as winning a title against 300. But I don't actually believe the Cup is meaningless. And I certainly don't begrudge Stanford (or whoever happened to win men's water polo) their success.
Marcus, AU swimming has more than 4 by themselves, so those numbers are a bit off.
Doesn't surprise me about Arkansas, though--if memory serves, they've had an incredible track program.
To finally put to rest the water polo debate, I think this pretty much shows the west coast bias:
http://www.ncaa.com/history/m-waterpolo.html
In all seriousness, every single school on that list is in California. Crazy.
Jerry, you are right. Apparently we have 7 titles in Men's Swimming and 5 in Women's Swimming as well as one in Women's track:
http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/stats/champs_records_book/summaries/Men.pdf
http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/stats/champs_records_book/summaries/Women.pdf
Going by that barometer, Arkansas leads the SEC in Men's sports and LSU leads in Women's. Weird.
Oh, and since we are obsessed with Bama, I of course have to point out that Bama only has a measly 4 NCAA titles compared to AU's 13, so yeah, woo-hoo, and all that :)
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