Finishing 18th

2021-22 Learfield Directors' Cup final standings

TigerBlog hopes you had a fun and safe Fourth of July weekend.

Did you see any fireworks? Beach? Barbecue? 

Did you watch "Yankee Doodle Dandy?" If you missed the latter, here it is again:

That clip is TB's favorite part of the Fourth of July. Here's one thing that TB just can't get into: the hot dog eating contest. Just the thought of it makes him queasy.  

Now that the Fourth is over, today is more about the 18th. Not the date of the 18th. The 18th, as in an 18th-place finish.

The official final standings for the 2021-22 Learfield Directors' Cup were announced at the end of last week, and Princeton finished in 18th place (not to brag or anything, but TB said Princeton would finish 18th after the baseball points were awarded when he wrote about the Cup two weeks ago). 

By the way, this is Princeton's best finish ever, beating the 21st-place finish of the 2001-02 academic year. 

In case you're wondering what the Directors' Cup is, it's a competition to determine the best overall collegiate athletic programs in all of the divisions. Schools are assigned points based on NCAA championship qualification and success, and the team with the most points wins.

The Division I winner this year was Texas, which was nearly 100 points ahead of Stanford, who has won the Cup all but three times. If you look at the 17 schools ahead of Princeton, the breakdown by conference is this:

* five SEC
* five ACC
* three Pac 12
* two Big 12
* two Big Ten

Those affiliations are, as an aside, where the schools are today. In the current climate, who knows where they will be tomorrow.

The schools who finished directly behind Princeton are Georgia, Ole Miss, Duke, Alabama and Oklahoma State. You have to go down to BYU in 29th place to find another non-Power Five school other than Princeton.

And remember, Princeton only scored points in 16 sports, as opposed to the maximum 19, because points are scored in men's and women's basketball, baseball, volleyball and then your next 15 best finishes.

It's even more extraordinary to do this one year after having only a handful of competitions due to the pandemic. What it really speaks to is the remarkable job that Princeton's coaches and athletes did of maintaining their team chemistries and cultures during the year away. It speaks to the self-motivation of the athletes, who were literally spread around the country and the world and yet still managed to train and practice as much as possible.

Once everyone reconvened back on campus, there were two full classes of athletes who had never played as Tigers and another class for spring sports that had barely any experience. With all of these newcomers and all of this uncertainty, it would have been easy to excuse the teams for not being at their best for the 2021-22 season.

But nope. Princeton came storming back, and the Directors' Cup results prove that. 

Think about it. You're a coach of a team that has been sidelined for more than a year. You have some players who were on campus in the spring of 2021. You have others who withdrew for a year. Then you have a whole contingent who are brand-new to what you're doing on a day-to-day basis, how practices are run, what expectations there are. In addition, they hardly know anyone and you hardly know them.

You can debate all you want about whether or not the 2021-22 athletic year at Princeton was its greatest ever.  It's not debatable that the challenges that were faced by coaches and athletes this year were so unique that there was no precedent to draw from. Everyone had to figure it out as they went along. Despite that, it was a year of incredible success.

Also, this is all about points from NCAA competition. It's not about how many conference championships you won (Princeton won 16 of those, with 13 Ivy titles and three from non-Ivy sports). 

In other words, you have to get to the postseason and then compete with all of the best, most fully funded athletic programs there are. To finish 18th? It's simply extraordinary.