Welcome back to our weekly Texas newsletter, BFN. Sometimes, BFN is known by the long form of its title, Bevo’s Fake Nuts. Hook ‘em.
With the track & field teams’ finishes at nationals over the weekend, Texas clinched its third Directors’ Cup, a trophy the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics awards each year to the best athletic department in the country. With the victory, Texas wrested control of the crown back from Stanford, who won it last year after two straight Longhorn triumphs.
The Directors’ Cup standings are determined by a mathematical formula, one which awards points for national finishes in baseball, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, and up to 15 other sports. Winning it is a major achievement, something only three universities have ever done since the challenge was created ahead of the 1993–94 academic year. Winning it three times in four years, as Texas has now pulled off, is an even bigger accomplishment. Texas has the best athletic department in the country, top to bottom, and it has for a little while now. That’s a nice consolation prize for a school that hasn’t won a national championship in football in almost twenty years.
Prior to Texas’s recent run, Stanford ruled the Directors’ Cup. Before Covid plunged collegiate athletics and a few other things into chaos, Stanford had won 25 of these bad boys in a row, something especially impressive when considering the thing had only existed for 26 years (UNC won the other one). Is Texas the new Stanford? Yes. Does Texas want to be? Of course not. Sorry, Texas. You’re nerds now.
The way college sports work, especially away from the coasts (i.e., away from the places people don’t care about college sports), is that football matters and everything else sometimes matters. What determines when everything else matters? How much it either distracts or calls attention to the school’s performance in football. If Tennessee wins the College World Series next week, that will matter to Tennessee. Tennessee will enjoy the victory, which will make nobody think of football. When Texas wins the Directors’ Cup, that can’t matter to Texas. Because if Texas is able to be the best at all the other sports, why can’t it be the best at the sport it cares about the most?
Unfortunately for Texas, the Stanford answer holds: Texas is a bunch of nerds. This isn’t Great Depression-era Seattle. Most rowers row because their parents spied an angle to get them into a better college. Texas’s other reigning national champions, the volleyball team? Smart, upstanding women, the same kind of people who’ve driven Stanford’s “athletic success” for decades. If Texas hadn’t blown it against Washington in the Sugar Bowl, this conversation might be different. Texas might have upset Michigan, captured the national championship a year ahead of schedule, and made the Directors’ Cup thing an “and.” As in, “Texas was the best football team in the country, and it’s got the best athletic department across the board.” Instead, it’s a “but.” Which, as any nerd well-versed in homophones can tell you, is awfully close to “butt.”
So congratulations, dorks. We respect these fine student-athletes, and in the relevant sports we respect their industrious parents who got them into the very best country clubs as children. We’re not the ones who don’t respect Texas’s achievement here. Texas is the one who doesn’t respect it. Good luck convincing the base that this makes up for the Charlie Strong–Tom Herman era.
This Week
The Longhorn softball team lost the College World Series finals to Oklahoma, two games to none, and while on the one hand this is fair—it’s Oklahoma softball—on the other hand it’s a grave disappointment after taking the regular season series. Guess the best athletic department isn’t the same as the most clutch.
Overall, Oklahoma won the season series four games to two, going 3–0 in the state of Oklahoma and 1–2 on Texas soil. This marks the conclusion of the Red River Rivalry as we know it, not because football’s kickoff time is changing (how dare they make a slight adjustment after 14 years of consistency), but because reentering regular play against Texas A&M is going to make the collegial Oklahoma rivalry even friendlier. Differences between Texas and Oklahoma are like the differences between the United States and Canada. Differences between Texas and Texas A&M are like the differences between Israel and Iran.
As we alluded to above, the track & field teams finished third (women) and twelfth (men) at the national championships over the weekend in Eugene. National champions:
- Ackelia Smith (long jump)
- Ackelia Smith (triple jump)
- Leo Neugebauer (decathlon)
Wondering why there weren’t more? Very good question. Guess the best athletic department isn’t the same as the fastest.
