On the strength of 3 national championships & 8 total Top 10 national finishes this year, the Arizona State University athletics department has finished 4th in the 2007-08 U.S. Sports Academy Director’s Cup standings that were released by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) Thursday. The Cup standings reflect each university’s success in collegiate athletics throughout the academic year & are used to determine the top overall collegiate athletics programs in the nation each year.
"The 2007-08 year has been a most exciting season for us at Arizona State University," Lisa Love, Vice President for University Athletics, said. “I could not be prouder of the student-athletes & coaches who competed at such a high level for our university. Their accomplishments have brought great prestige to our university & our community. We compete in such a prolific conference, the Pacific-10 Conference, in which we won 5 conference titles. We also won 3 national championships. I am so proud of the great work going on within our athletic family.”
With 1,146.00 points, the Sun Devils claimed their first placement among the Top 5 in the Cup standings for the first time under the current NACDA formula, which was started in time for the 1993-94 academic year, & surpasses the previous top finish of 9th place in 2000-01. ASU was the third-highest finisher this year among Pac-10 schools with Stanford (1,461.00) winning the Cup & UCLA (1,182.00) placing second. Michigan was third (1,154.00).
The Sun Devils earned 100 points each from the softball, men’s indoor track & field and women’s indoor track & field squads this year after each won national titles. The women’s outdoor track & field team (2nd), the women’s cross country team (4th) & the women’s golf team (5th) each earned Top 5 finishes to help the Sun Devils climb the charts. Overall, 18 of the department’s 22 teams scored points toward the Cup with half of the teams securing more than 60 points each.
Following the fall, the Sun Devils stood 28th overall with 165 points as women’s cross country (80), football (63) & men’s cross country (22) each scored. The winter saw 7 of the school’s 8 eligible teams score points to bring the overall total to 612 points & push the department to 9th overall. In the winter, the indoor track teams picked-up 200 total points while swimming combined for 113 (57 for women & 56 for men). Also adding to the total included women’s basketball (50), wrestling (45.5) & gymnastics (38.5).
In the spring, 8 of the 9 eligible teams scored 25 or more points, including the national champion softball squad (100) & fellow Top 10 finishers women’s track & field (90 points, second), women’s golf (75, fifth), men’s track & field (73.5, sixth) & baseball (64, ninth). Adding to the totals were men’s golf (56.5), women’s tennis (50) & men’s tennis (25).
The Cup was started in the early 1970’s by the Knoxville Journal with the newspaper awarding points based upon finishes in the national meets & tallying 3 standings: men, women & combined. Under that format, ASU climbed its way into the Top 5 on several occasions as a combined program, finishing 2nd in 1981 after placing third in 1976, 1977 & 1978. When USA Today took over compiling the numbers in the late 1980’s, the Sun Devils finished in the Top 10 on several occasions as a combined program with their highest finish coming in 1990 when they finished 4th after the men were 4th & women 5th in their separate divisions.