Bruin athletics rank among the best in the countryBy Brent
Boyd
Summer Bruin Senior Staff
UCLA athletes improved upon the rich athletic tradition of the
school when they were named the second-best athletic department in
the country in the Sears Directors’ Cup competition.
The competition was established to recognize the most successful
athletic department as a whole, rather than just recognizing each
individual sport.
The second-place finish is UCLA’s highest in the history of the
3-year-old competition organized through the National Association
of Collegiate Directors of America (NACDA). Finishing behind only
Pacific 10 rival Stanford, the Bruins improved upon two consecutive
third-place finishes.
Despite a sluggish start for the Bruins, standing in sixth place
throughout the fall and winter quarters, the athletic teams
performed extremely well in the spring, allowing the Bruins to
overcome Penn State, Michigan, Nebraska and Ohio State en route to
their second-place finish.
The men’s tennis team earned significant points for the Bruins
by reaching the national championship match, while third-place
finishes in women’s tennis and softball, as well as top 10 rankings
for both track and field teams and a near birth in the College
World Series for the baseball team all enabled UCLA to jump higher
in the standings.
In addition, national championships in men’s water polo and
volleyball as well as the women’s gymnastics team placing second
nationally and a fourth-place finish by the women’s golf team gave
the Bruins some points early on in the competition.
"This is a tremendous achievement for all of UCLA’s outstanding
student-athletes and coaches and they should all be very proud,"
Bruin athletic director Peter Dalis said. "Everyone associated with
UCLA athletics, including our staff, students, fans and supporters
can share in this accomplishment."
The Bruins’ first-round loss in the NCAA basketball tournament
combined with the fact that points were not gained for football’s
Aloha Bowl appearance or the national championship earned by the
women’s water polo team all hurt UCLA’s chances at gaining their
first ever directors’ cup.
The NACDA awards the accomplishments of 22 sports at each
university  nine core sports for each gender as well as two
men and two women wild card sports (women’s water polo is not
included among the possibilities).
For each sport, there is a 64-point sliding scale (64 points for
first, 63 for second, etc.), based solely on postseason
performance. The only sport that has a meaningful regular season,
in relation to the Director’s Cup, is football, where a playoff
system does not exist and national rankings determine the final
point allotments.
Whereas the Eastern schools are traditionally dominant in the
major sports of football and basketball, the NACDA rates all sports
equally, and as a result the Western schools, whom usually do
better in the less popular sports such as golf, softball, tennis
and water polo have dominated the directors’ cup rankings over the
past three years.
This year, in addition to the top two finishers, the Pac-10
boasted two other top-10 schools with Arizona (seventh) and USC
(10th). The only other conference that had more than one university
in the top 10 was the Big 10 which had two (Michigan and Penn
State). Last year, the Pac-10 placed six of the top 13 finishers,
while in 1993-94 five of the top 10 hailed from the conference.