Editing NACDA Directors' Cup (section)

==Scoring system==
* '''NCAA Division I:''' Counts top 19 sports at each school with the following breakdowns:<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|title=LEARFIELD Directors' Cup Scoring Structure|url=https://nacda.com/sports/2018/7/17/directorscup-nacda-directorscup-scoring-html.aspx|access-date=2021-08-06|website=National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics|language=en}}</ref>
** Four of which must be baseball, men's basketball, women's basketball and women's volleyball
** The next highest 15 sports scored for each institution, regardless of gender, will be used in the standings (except men's water polo){{Efn|Men's water polo is the only sport with an NCAA championship for which NACDA does not award any points.|name=water polo|group=water polo}}
** For FBS Football: the top 25 teams are awarded points based on their final rank in the [[USA Today Coaches Poll|Coaches Poll]]. 26th place is considered a tie between every non-ranked bowl winner, and the next available rank is considered a tie between every non-ranked bowl loser.
* '''NCAA Division II:''' Counts top 15 sports at each school with the following breakdowns:<ref name=":2" />
** Four of which must be baseball, men's basketball, women's basketball and women's volleyball
** The next highest 11 sports scored for each institution, regardless of gender, will be used in the standings (except men's water polo){{Efn|name=water polo|group=water polo}}
* '''NCAA Division III:''' Counts top 18 sports at each school with the following breakdowns:<ref name=":2" />
** Four of which must be men's basketball, men's soccer, women's basketball and women's soccer
** The next highest 14 sports scored for each institution, regardless of gender, will be used in the standings (except men's water polo){{Efn|name=water polo|group=water polo}}
* '''NAIA:''' Counts top 13 sports at each school with the following breakdowns:<ref name=":2" />
** Four of which must be men's basketball, men's soccer, women's basketball and women's volleyball
** The next highest 9 sports scored for each institution, regardless of gender, will be used in the standings
* '''Junior/Community Colleges:''' The highest scoring institution in the [[NATYCAA Cup]] standings among the NJCAA Scholarship, NJCAA Non-Scholarship, and State Associations divisions will be declared the Directors' Cup winner.<ref name=":2" />
{{Notelist|group=water polo}}

=== Tiebreaking ===
If two teams have the same number of points at the end of the season, the tiebreaker is the number of national championships won. If still tied the next tiebreaker is the number of second-place finishes, then third-place finishes and so on until one team wins.<ref name=":2" /> The tiebreaker is only used for first place.

=== Criticism ===
The scoring structure has been criticized for several reasons, especially due to the number of sports counted per division. Although the number of sports counted in the scoring is based on the average number of sports sponsored by a team in that division, certain schools offer many more or many fewer sports than that. For example, Stanford's dominance at the Division I level is partially attributable to them sponsoring 36 sports teams (of which 31 are NCAA sports), the most in Division I outside of the [[Ivy League]], which does not grant athletic scholarships, and Ohio State, which sponsors 37 sports teams (of which 32 are NCAA sports). This gives Stanford more opportunities to win titles than most other schools, especially considering that some of the sports Stanford sponsors are not played by very many other schools (5 out of 31 have championship fields under 20 teams, and one [namely men's gymnastics] has fewer than 20 sponsoring schools), all but guaranteeing a substantial number of points for the few schools that do (NACDA awards significantly fewer points for teams that finish lower than fourth in sports with less competition, but the top four teams (except in 8-team and 4-team bracket sports) always receive 100, 90, 85, and 80 points respectively). Ohio State, which sponsors teams in more NCAA sports than Stanford (5 of which, like Stanford, have championship fields under 20 teams) has never won the Cup (Ohio State has finished second 3 times, third twice, fourth 3 times, and in the top ten 7 more times).

Another common criticism is the fact that four sports are required to be counted despite some schools not sponsoring those sports. While every Division I school sponsors men's basketball, and all but two (The Citadel and VMI) sponsor women's basketball, a significant number of D-I schools do not sponsor the other two "mandatory counters" of baseball and women's volleyball. In the 2023–24 school year, 21 schools did not sponsor women's volleyball and 53 did not sponsor baseball, giving those schools an inherent disadvantage as they must count a sport for which they are guaranteed to receive no points.

Other reasons for criticism are over the way NACDA awards points in "[[National Collegiate]]" sports, which are sports where Division I, II, and III schools all compete directly against each other instead of being separated. The NCAA considers National Collegiate championships equivalent to Division I, therefore Division III schools are allowed to grant athletic scholarships in those sports, but NACDA counts points earned in National Collegiate competitions toward whatever division a team primarily competes in. Similarly, several otherwise Division III schools compete in Division I for men's ice hockey (despite Division III having its own ice hockey tournament), so there have been instances where two different Division III teams earn 100 points in the sport.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Apr17D3LSDC (PDF) |url=https://nacda.com/documents/2018/7/19/Apr17D3LSDC.pdf?id=1956 |access-date=2023-01-02 |website=National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics |language=en}}</ref>

Multiple suggestions have been made to change the scoring system. Some of the most popular of these include making each sport worth a proportional number of points to the number of schools that compete in it, to get rid of the limit on the number of sports counted, then divide a school's total points by the number of sports it sponsors, and to count the median number of teams per division instead of the average (the median number of teams at a Division I school, for example, is 16, which is substantially lower than the 19 sports that are currently counted). However, NACDA has never seriously considered any of these suggestions.

=== Past scoring system ===
From the creation of the award until the 2017–18 season the scoring was as follows:<ref>{{Cite web |title=Clarification - Learfield Directors' Cup Scoring Changes |url=http://www.nacda.com/sports/directorscup/spec-rel/050417aaf.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180830073308/http://www.nacda.com/sports/directorscup/spec-rel/050417aaf.html |archive-date=2018-08-30}}</ref>

* '''NCAA Division I:''' Counted up to 20 total sports at each school, with a maximum of 10 sports counted for each gender
* '''NCAA Division II:''' Counted up to 14 total sports at each school, with a maximum of 7 sports counted for each gender
* '''NCAA Division III:''' Counted up to 18 total sports at each school, with a maximum of 9 sports counted for each gender
* '''NAIA:''' Counted up to 12 total sports at each school, with a maximum of 6 sports counted for each gender
* '''Junior/Community Colleges:''' Same as current