Texas A&M snags top 15 finish in Director’s Cup

With the 2018-2019 college athletics calendar complete, this year’s Learfield IMG College Director’s Cup standings are final, and the Texas A&M Aggies finishing 15th. A&M is ranked as the second-best program in Texas (Longhorns came in at #4) and the fourth-best program in the SEC (Florida #3, LSU #11, Kentucky #14).

The Aggies finished the year with top 10 finishes in the following sports:

• Women’s outdoor track and field (4)
• Men’s golf (5)
• Men’s track and field (6)
• Women’s basketball (9)
• Women’s soccer (9)
• Women’s tennis (9)
• Women’s indoor track and field (10)

In addition, A&M had top 20 finishes in the following sports:

• Men’s indoor track and field (11)
• Women’s swimming (13)
• Football (16)
• Baseball (17)
• Men’s tennis (17)
• Men’s swimming (17)

It should be noted that these rankings are far from perfect, as they seem to reward the number of sports your school participates in as much as they do excellence within those sports. Stanford has won the Director’s Cup 25 times, and while they do have an outstanding program from top to bottom (they won six team national titles this year), they also traditionally participate in more sports than most of the other schools on this list.

Our perceptions are also often skewed by a school’s performance in revenue sports. It’s hard to wrap your mind around the fact that Texas was a top five program despite missing the NCAA tournaments in both basketball and baseball, while Tech went to the Final Four and the College World Series but finished outside the top 30.

A&M’s 15th place finish is down from 10th in 2017-18.