Oklahoma State Sixth in Learfield Cup Standings
STILLWATER – With the athletic calendar halfway through the 2010-11 school year, Oklahoma State sits sixth nationally in the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings.
The Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup is awarded annually to the nation’s best overall collegiate athletics program. In 1993, USA Today and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) jointly launched the Directors’ Cup and it has since grown into a highly recognized mark of distinction among collegiate institutions. Each institution is awarded points in a pre-determined number of sports for men and women. The overall champion is the institution that records the highest number of points in their division’s Directors’ Cup standings.
Anchored by men’s cross country’s second-consecutive national championship, Oklahoma State also gained points from football, women’s soccer and women’s cross country, which all finished in the top 17 nationally and rewrote the school record books.
OSU’s sixth-place standing in the final fall standings is made even more impressive considering all five of the schools ranked above Oklahoma State competed in more sports. OSU tallied 279.5 total points with just four programs in competition.
The cross country program, led by coach Dave Smith, totaled 139 points behind the men’s title, worth 100 points, and the women’s 17th-place finish, their best in five years. In the Cowboys’ dominating season, they won the individual title in every meet they competed in with the exception of the national meet, where three OSU athletes finished in the top 10 and the team won by the fourth-largest margin of victory in the history of the NCAA Men’s Cross Country Championships.
The 2010 women’s soccer team achieved a school-record 20 wins, a berth in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Women’s Soccer Championship and a third consecutive Big 12 Conference championship. Its program-best No. 5 national ranking in the final 2010 poll gave OSU an additional 73 points in the standings.
The Cowboy football team surprised everyone with its record-setting 11-2 season. Picked to finish near the bottom of the Big 12 South in the preseason rankings, the Cowboys won a co-Big 12 South championship and finished as the 10th-best team in the country according to the final USA Today poll, worth 67.5 points in the standings.
The 2010-11 winter and spring sports standings will be added to the fall to determine the winner of the 2010-11 the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup. Five Oklahoma State teams will compete in the winter season (wrestling, men’s and women’s basketball and men’s and women’s indoor track and field), while eight compete in the spring (baseball, softball, men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s tennis and men’s and women’s outdoor track and field).
The winner of the award will be honored at the conclusion of the spring sports season.
2010-11 Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup Final Fall Standings (Top 10)
Rank School Points
1. Stanford 399.00
2. North Carolina 380.00
3. Ohio State 369.00
4. Florida State 361.50
5. Penn State 300.00
6. Oklahoma State 279.50
7. Maryland 273.00
8. California 270.00
9. Duke 258.00
10. Virginia 244.00
Updated 01-14-2011
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