After almost 50 years of being bumped around and beaten up by the elite sports programs at Stanford, USC, UCLA and Oregon, it seems impossible that Arizona is only the seventh-best athletic program in the less-than-formidable Big 12.
That’s how it looks on paper. The final standings of the 2024-25 Director’s Cup are now in the books, and this is how the Big 12 finished nationally (Texas, USC and Stanford finished 1-2-3):
– 25: BYU, 813 points
– 29: Oklahoma State, 752
– 34: ASU, 693
– 38: TCU, 639
– 40: Texas Tech, 613
– 42: West Virginia, 575
– 43: Arizona, 571
(Cincinnati was dead last with 125 points.)
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From 1995-2010, Arizona used to be a regular in the final Top 10 of the Director’s Cup. For the last 15 years, a finish somewhere in the 40s or 50s has been Arizona’s regular placement. What happened? The school’s swimming, cross country, football, volleyball and soccer programs diminished.
In the public mind, BYU is hardly the Big 12’s most successful all-around athletic department, but the Cougars won NCAA championships in men’s and women’s cross country, finished tied for ninth overall in men’s basketball, 14th in football and scored heavily in men’s and women’s indoor track and field, as well as men’s golf and men’s tennis. Top 25 finishers in each sport get from 15 to 100 points.
As good as Arizona coach Clancy Shields‘ men’s tennis team has been, the 64 Director’s Cup points earned by his squad still left UA’s overall tally far behind the Cougars.
Arizona tennis head coach Clancy Shields talks to his team before the Wildcats faced Denver in the NCAA Tournament on May 2, 2025.
As UA athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois attempts to rebuild the UA track, cross country and swimming teams with new coaches, the one unavoidable and most hurtful variable of finishing behind BYU (and ASU) is that Arizona did not score a point — zero — in its fall sports: football, soccer, volleyball, men’s and women’s cross country.
Falling that far behind is a crusher. BYU scored 319 points in the fall.
Arizona State has not been known for the total excellence of its athletic department since the 1970s, when it was a clear Top 25 school in men’s basketball, men’s track, football and baseball. Yet it finished ahead of Arizona this year by a considerable margin. Some explanation is required.
The Sun Devils scored 60 points in women’s water polo, a sport Arizona does not sponsor. ASU also scored 55 points in wrestling, another sport Arizona doesn’t sponsor. Subtract those 115 points, and it would be ASU 578, Arizona 571. The difference-maker was that the Sun Devils scored 128 points in its elite men’s and women’s swimming programs, its most successful sport of the last decade, taking advantage of the UA’s fall from swimming power.
It is also a crusher that ASU earned 72 points for its Big 12 championship football team. Arizona? It didn’t earn a Director’s Cup point in football.
How did new Big 12 rival West Virginia, of all schools, finish ahead of Arizona in the Director’s Cup? The Mountaineers scored 50 points in men’s soccer and 55 in wrestling, two sports unavailable at Arizona. Yes, asterisks are sometimes required to put the Director’s Cup standings in perspective.
But overall, the final standings speak loudly. Arizona’s athletic department has not been at the elite level since the Jim Livengood years, 1994-2009, when the UA’s non-revenue sports stood tall, producing All-Americans such as Ryk Neethling, Amanda Beard, Amy Skieresz, Robert Cheseret, Kim Glass and Lorena Ochoa with regularity.
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