Iowa climbs out of last place in overall Big Ten athletics

Baby steps. Last year, Iowa was 11th out of the 11 Big Ten athletic programs in the Division I Learfield Sports Directors Cup standings. Iowa was 55th overall.

This year, Iowa was 9th in the Big Ten and 43rd overall.

The scoring system can be found here. Each program counts its top 10 men's and top 10 women's results in national championships.

This year's Big Ten rankings:

2. Ohio State, 13. Penn State, 15. Michigan, 23. Illinois, 26. Wisconsin, 28. Indiana, 29. Minnesota, 42. Michigan State, 43. Iowa, 46. Northwestern, 49. Purdue.

Iowa State slipped from 34th in the nation in 2009-10 to 60th this year.

Nebraska was 33rd this year.

The Big 12's top program, as it was the year before, was Texas A&M.

Stanford finished first in the national standings for the 17th consecutive year, followed by Ohio State, California, Florida and Duke. The ACC had four schools in the top 10.