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Director's Cup Update
by Chris Coleman, TechSideline.com

Ever since Virginia Tech began competing in the ACC in all sports, the Hokies have faced new challenges in the Olympic sports. Before the new conference membership, Tech was known simply as a football school that didn't have much success on the other playing fields. That has changed somewhat in the last few years, and at this point the Hokies are higher in the Directors' Cup standings than they've ever been.

The Directors' Cup is given each year to the school that is most successful in all sports. Points are awarded based on the finishes of each team and each school. It's not a perfect system. Sports like fencing and men's and women's ice hockey are included, and very few schools actually field varsity teams in those sports. However, overall it's a good indication of an athletic department's overall competitiveness.

Virginia Tech competitiveness has improved since they joined the ACC for the 2004-05 competition.

Virginia Tech's final ranking has gone up each of the last three years. That goes hand-in-hand with joining the ACC. The Hokies have recruited some excellent non-revenue sport athletes since their admission to the ACC. Do you think players like Patrick Nyarko (soccer), or softball phenom Angela Tincher would be at Virginia Tech without the competition draw of the ACC? Probably not.

As a result of drawing better athletes to Blacksburg, Virginia Tech has seen rapid growth in their non-revenue programs. Despite facing much better competition than before, the Hokies are catching up to the field.

Tech's Directors' Cup standing continues to get better this academic year. Here is a look at how the ACC stands at the national level. All points and rankings were last updated on April 5th.

Right now the Hokies are running in the middle of the pack in the ACC, but they are up five spots nationally from where they finished last season. There will be another round of scoring with the completion of the spring sports.

In the last scoring period, schools were scored in 12 different sports. Virginia Tech fields varsity teams for seven of those sports, and five of them scored points. Men's basketball (50 points), women's swimming (52), women's track and field (42.5), men's track and field (10) and wrestling (13) were the top winter sports at Virginia Tech. Of the seven sports in which the Hokies competed, only women's basketball and men's swimming did not score.

The other sports included in the last scoring session were fencing, men's ice hockey, women's ice hockey, rifle and skiing. Tech does not compete in those sports.

The Hokies have a good chance to pick up some more points this spring. The Virginia Tech men's golf team recently shared the ACC Championship with Georgia Tech, and the women's track and field team won the ACC Outdoor Championship outright. Also, the Tech softball team is currently first in the ACC and will be heading for the NCAA tournament for the third straight year.

It's probably still unfair to compare Virginia Tech to the rest of the ACC in all sports. Because the Hokies have shuffled from conference to conference in the last 50 years, they've never really had a home. It's probably best to compare Tech to the other two new ACC schools, Boston College and Miami.

As you can see in the table above, Virginia Tech is one spot ahead of BC in the standings. That gap will probably widen this spring. The Eagles didn't score a single point in spring sports last year. Miami is near the bottom of the league at 58th nationally.

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