The Best! Texas wins the 2023-24 Directors' Cup
For the third time in the last four years, the Texas Longhorns athletic department has won the NACDA Learfield Directors’ Cup. The Directors’ Cup is awarded to the institution which has a broad-based program, achieving success in many sports, both men’s and women’s. Better said, it goes to the top athletic department in the country. For 2023-24, the Texas Longhorns earned that title.
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Texas took the crystal trophy back from the Stanford Cardinal, who have been a mainstay at the top of the Directors’ Cup standings for most of the award’s history. After Texas won the Directors’ Cup in 2020-21 and 2021-22, the Cardinal returned to the top of the standings for the 26th time in the 29 year history of the award in 2022-23.
Texas returned to the mountaintop this athletic year, buoyed by national championships in volleyball and rowing plus national runner-up finishes in softball, women’s swimming and diving, and men’s tennis.
The point total for the Directors’ Cup has to include baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, and volleyball. Baseball bowed out in the regional round of the NCAA Tournament, which did contribute points to the Longhorns’ total. Rodney Terry’s team made it into the round of 32. Vic Schaefer’s team reached the Elite Eight. Volleyball, as mentioned, took home the national championship.
The Division I Directors’ Cup counts 19 sports toward the total, with the highest finishers after the aforementioned sports contributing to Texas’ point total. Successes from men’s golf, men’s swimming and diving, men’s tennis, men’s track, men’s cross country, women’s basketball, women’s golf, rowing, soccer, softball, women’s swimming and diving, women’s tennis, women’s track, and, of course, volleyball boosted the Longhorns to the top spot among athletic departments in the country.
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Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte has said he wants all of his programs to be competing for national championships. The Longhorns did that across many of the sports they sponsor, and as a result took home the honors for the best athletic department in the country.
