Final Directors’ Cup Standings
With the NCAA’s athletic year complete, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) published the final 2022-23 LEARFIELD Directors’ Cup standings Wednesday, and Tennessee locked in its best finish ever at No. 6.
Tennessee last posted a top-10 Directors’ Cup finish in 2006-07 when it landed at a previous-best No. 7.
With 1,078.75 total points this year—accumulated thanks to scoring contributions of at least 25 points by 19 different teams—Tennessee finished second among SEC schools.
For a team-by-team scoring breakdown, see the sidebar HERE.
Tennessee sat in 10th place when NACDA posted its previous standings update on June 13. And thanks to the Volunteers baseball program netting 78 points with its run to the College World Series, UT leapfrogged Michigan, USC, North Carolina and Georgia in the final standings.
“Competitive excellence is a major priority in Rise Glorious, our comprehensive five-year strategic plan, and to record our best LEARFIELD Directors’ Cup finish ever is an incredible achievement,” Tennessee Vice Chancellor/Director of Athletics Danny White said. “It’s important to us to cultivate a championship culture across all 20 of our sports, and this finish is a prime example of that. Congratulations to our student-athletes, coaches and staff on this record finish. Buckle up Vol Nation, we’re just getting started, and it’s going to be one heck of a ride!”
The Big Orange have steadily ascended in the Directors’ Cup standings over the last three years since the competition was canceled in 2019-20. Tennessee finished 26th in 2020-21 and 13th a year ago.
Tennessee’s consecutive top-15 finishes align with one of the strategies outlined in the department’s Rise Glorious Strategic Plan, published last July. Under its Competitive Excellence priority, the plan aspires for UT to “finish in the top 15 [in the Directors’ Cup] in three out of every five years.”
This latest achievement relating to competitive excellence comes just a month after Tennessee won its second consecutive SEC All-Sports title. In doing so, it became only the second school ever to sweep both the men’s and women’s SEC All-Sports standings.
-UT Athletics
