Was the SEC college sports’ top conference in 2024-25?

The SEC is known for its football, but is the league now the most balanced in the nation?

For the first time in the history of the NACDA Director’s Cup, the league is home to the champ and four of the top 10. The standings are designed to measure the overall success of athletics departments, as SEC newcomer Texas edged Stanford for the win.

The conference was home to national champions in eight of the 21 sports it sponsors. Among that list of sports that includes SEC teams, the Big Ten had the next most titles with six.

The ACC had four, the Big 12 had three.

The SEC was home to 13 of the top 30 teams in the standings, with nobody finishing lower than Vanderbilt at No. 58.

Florida has finished No. 2 five times in the final standings and finished seventh this year.

Auburn topped Alabama for the first time since 2016 this year as the Tigers finished 19th to the Crimson Tide’s 22nd.

The standings don’t weight sports differently, as cross country accounts for the same number of points as football.

A few other highlights for the SEC

  • Florida won the league’s first men’s basketball championship since Kentucky in 2012. 
  • LSU made it six straight baseball national champs from the SEC. The last time the league didn’t have the top team was 2018. 
  • Texas won the first men’s swimming and diving title for the SEC since Auburn claimed the 2009 crown. The Tigers won eight from 1997-2009.
  • The softball championship from Texas was the first for an SEC school since 2015, when Florida won it. Current SEC member Oklahoma won it six times in that span as a member of the Big 12. 

Three of the eight SEC national champions came from the newcomers as Texas won both softball and men’s swimming while Oklahoma won another gymnastics crown.

The following is a list of all the national champions from the sports in which the SEC competes.