The Syracuse athletic department ranked 31st after the Fall in the Director's Cup standings when they were released on Thursday. The metric is used by some athletic directors to gauge the overall success of their programs and by many schools to determine performance bonuses for athletic administrators.
Syracuse has excelled in the competition lately so, while 31st is a reasonably solid performance, it is the worst Fall performance by Syracuse since 2011-12, when the Orange ranked 32nd.
Since that year, Syracuse has routinely been ranked among the 20 best schools in the country, even finishing the Fall season as high as second place two years ago.