SEC Places 6 In Top 25 Athletic Department Rankings

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When it comes to football, men’s and women’s basketball and baseball, the SEC is currently the master of its domain.  In the last six years, the league has won 12 of the 24 national crowns in those sports.

But there are other sports.  Oh, sure, most fans don’t pay to watch them, but if you’re gonna play them, you might as well win them.  And that’s where the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup comes in.

From the sports mentioned above to lacrosse and water polo, the Directors’ Cup goes to the program that does the most winning across the board in a given year.  This year that program is Stanford’s.  No surprise.  The Cardinal have won the award for 17 years running.

Atop the SEC is Florida.  The Gators finished #4 in the national rankings behind Stanford, Ohio State and California.

Here’s a glimpse at how the SEC’s programs ranked nationally for the 2010-11 school year:

For the sake of comparison, Vanderbilt ranks behind Tulsa, TCU, the University of Denver and Georgetown.

Ole Miss ranks behind New Mexico and Central Florida.

And Mississippi State falls farther down the list than Cornell, Kent State, New Hampshire, Dartmouth and UC-Irvine.


Now let’s toss in the 2009-10 athletic budget numbers for each SEC school (and remember, schools often handle their bookkeeping in different ways… some schools do not reveal private dollars going toward coaching salaries, for example):

In terms of conference rankings, here’s a look at the Top 25 programs coming from each major conference this past athletic year:


Pac-10 = 6
SEC = 6
ACC = 5
Big Ten = 4
Big 12 = 3
Big East = 1 (The one being Notre Dame which does not compete in the league in football)