Hi guys, I just came across this interesting wiki article counting the Olympic medals of U.S universities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_universities_with_Olympic_medals.
My question is, does that imply that Stanford is #2 sports university in America? I know their football team is awesome. 
Stanford has won the Director’s Cup for 21 straight years.
WOW!!! This list looks consistent with the Olympic medal list! Nice!
What does that even mean? Second sports university? Pretty silly stuff!
It’s certainly very strong in a lot of sports, lately even including football.
The Director’s Cup is a bit misleading though because the methodology favors schools that have the most varsity sports (IIRC it looks at the top ten men’s teams and top ten women’s teams at each school, or something along those lines). And Stanford has far more varsity sports than most D1 schools and I believe the most of any D1 school that gives athletic scholarships. Some of the Ivies have a lot of sports too but don’t have athletic scholarships. So the methodology is pretty much set up for Stanford to win.
Wouldn’t schools that have the most varsity sports and are willing to support students with athletic scholarships provide the most opportunities and diversity for students to participate?
How is that not a good measure for how much a school supports sports? What alternate measure would you propose?
Hey, I’m a big Stanford sports fan. I just mean the Director’s Cup results are heavily influenced by how many sports a school sponsors, so it’s a measure of quantity as well as quality. As a measure of opportunities for participation, it’s a good methodology. As a measure of having the best teams, not necessarily.
Stanford plays 16 men’s sports and 20 women’s sports at a varsity level, and some of these (e.g. water polo) are sports that few schools compete in at a varsity level. So Stanford is going to do well with a methodology that rates the 10 best men’s and 10 best women’s teams.
A lot of schools don’t even have 10 men’s and women’s teams. For example, current FBS football champion
Alabama has 7 men’s and 10 women’s sports.
If the methodology looked at top 5 teams for example, or top rated teams in the most competitive sports (the ones that the most schools play), the results might be different.