Cal Athletics Ranked No. 1 in Nation
In the fall Sports Academy Director’s Cup standings, Cal earns the top spot for its athletic program this past semester. With 364.5 points accumulated, Cal has beat out Stanfurd (334), Duke (316), UCLA (309), Wisconsin (309), and other notable schools.
CalBears.com explains that
The Director’s Cup, which was developed as a joint effort between the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and USA Today, measures the best overall collegiate athletics programs in the country and awards points based on final national standings in a maximum of 10 NCAA-sponsored sports for both men and women.
Our school boasts a NCAA championship for men’s water polo and top-20 standings in five other sports. In fact, men’s water polo grabbed its record 12th national title just this past season. Quite simply, the Bears were on a roll: volleyball’s finish was the best the school’s seen, men’s soccer won the Pac-10, field hockey won its conference and advanced to the main playoff draw, women’s soccer reached NCAA playoffs, and football was a Pac-10 champ and ranked 14th nationally.
Although a world-renowned university’s academics should not play second fiddle to its athletic program, this top ranking is important in bringing Cal sports to national acclaim. Good athletics brings in good money for the school (and even more reason to build that “high performance” athletic facility.) Perhaps a top athletics program alongside our already superb academics would help the university unite its two sides, Cal and UC Berkeley. The school, as it stands right now, is certainly going somewhere with its athletics (as the program has been improving in the past few years), but where exactly?
Great.
Now let’s go to better places with our academics.
Comment by Bhanu Singh — January 12, 2007 @ 1:02 pm
way to forget our most incredible rugby team.
Comment by Anonymous — January 14, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
Sadly rugby isn’t an NCAA sport so it isn’t included in the Director’s Cup, otherwise we’d be even higher ranked every year.
Comment by Joshua May — January 15, 2007 @ 3:11 am