Cuppers of Cuppers: Which college is the best at sport?

It’s possibly our most painstaking piece of research in years.

After weeks of bombarding sporty people with email requests and days of trawling through the most riveting data imaginable, The Tab can proudly present its contribution to the Myth Busters world.

Long-held assumptions about that most important of subjects, college sport, have been shattered. Although what these assumptions exactly are is unclear, we are nonetheless confident you will now look upon Cambridge’s sporty underbelly in a new light.

The league tables from football, rugby, netball and hockey and the final order from May Bumps have been used to judge which college rules them all.

Yeah, so basically, this is what we found out. And by the way, the higher the number of points, the better. Here’s the mind-blowing, paradigm-shifting top 20:

As for the maths behind this, well, the lowest placed college first team/boat has been given one point and each team/boat scores one more point than the team below. (Then we sort of averaged them and rounded these to obtain the numbers above. For a full explanation of the scoring system click here.)

Basically, it’s pretty fair. And, basically, Jesus are the undisputed titans of college cuppers.

Despite not leading the field in netball, Jesus came first in rowing and football, excelled in hockey cuppers and made a fair effort in rugby cuppers.

Jesus playing Caius at rugby earlier in the year

They fended off fierce competition from Downing, whose superior netball prowess was not quite matched by their performance in the other four sports.

John’s, Emma, Catz and Pembroke made up the chasing pack.

The Top 10

Find out where your college is ranked in the full table here.

On further analysis, some surprising results came to light.

Homerton and Robinson are particularly strong at rugby but not much else. Fitz love their football way more than any other sport. Catz’s strong performance in hockey gave them their fifth place finish despite relatively poor results in rowing and football.

An honourable mention should go the all female colleges Newnham and Murray Edwards. Despite not being able to compete in half of the sports competition, they came 21st and 18th respectively.

So pretty on the outside, so full of fierce sportswomen on the inside

Murray Edwards performed so well in women’s hockey and netball that their overall score was higher than Kings’. Take that.

The Tab ran this same competition six years ago with Pembroke the biggest risers since then. A Dearlove-inspired boat club has improved massively with the football teams progressing too. The biggest fallers were Magdalene, dropping from 17th to 24th.

Right, that’s enough stats and maths for now. We’ll try again next year.