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BYU athletics earns a Top 20 spot in latest Directors’ Cup standings

By Shaun Gordon

SALT LAKE CITY, UT - SEPTEMBER 10: A flag for the Brigham Young Cougars enters the field of play for their game against the Utah Utes, at Rice Eccles Stadium on September 10, 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)
SALT LAKE CITY, UT - SEPTEMBER 10: A flag for the Brigham Young Cougars enters the field of play for their game against the Utah Utes, at Rice Eccles Stadium on September 10, 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images) /
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The latest update is out for the Learfield Directors’ Cup, and a strong showing from BYU athletics’ fall sports has the Cougars in the Top 20.

To say that BYU athletics has had an excellent fall sports season would be an understatement.

Men’s Cross Country finished No. 2 in the nation. Women’s Cross Country finished No. 7. Women’s Soccer placed No. 33.

Those three sports have put the Cougars at No. 16 in the latest Learfield Directors’ Cup standings, released on Thursday.

The Directors’ Cup is a system created to measure the best overall athletic program. It includes all NCAA sanctioned sports, with schools earning points for national finishes.

For example, the national champion in each sport earns 100 cup points for their school. The runner-up gets 90 points, and so forth.

The latest update to the rankings doesn’t include all of the fall sports, only calculating:

  • Men’s Cross Country
  • Women’s Cross Country
  • Women’s Field Hockey
  • Women’s Soccer
  • Men’s Soccer
  • Men’s Water Polo

That means that Football and Women’s Volleyball will be added later, and while BYU won’t see any points from football, they’ll see a big jump from BYU’s Final Four run from the Women’s Volleyball team.

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Of the six sports in the updated rankings BYU only plays in three, and they’ve earned points in all three:

  • 90 points for Men’s Cross Country’s No. 2 finish
  • 72 points for Women’s Cross Country’s No. 7 finish
  • 25 points for Women’s Soccer’s No. 33 finish

That’s a total of 187 points, good for No. 16 in the country. However, that’s less than half of No. 1 Stanford. The Cardinal participate in five of the six sports included so far, and they placed in the Top 5 in every single one. Their 396 points is 130 more than Wake Forest, who sits in second.

BYU is almost always the top non-power conference team when the final season results come out, but with the school’s hot start they could be in store for one of their best finishes in program history.

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