The panorama of school sports activities was rocked to the core just lately when one in all its longtime flagship conferences, the Pac-12, appeared on the verge of disintegration.
We knew that UCLA and USC have been leaving for the Massive Ten, however then Oregon and Washington hopped on the bandwagon. Colorado introduced it will depart the Pac-12 for the Massive 12, and when Oregon and Washington bolted, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah joined the Massive 12, too.
All that’s left of the staggering Pac-12 are Stanford, California, Oregon State and Washington State. The storied “Convention of Champions” doesn’t have a media-rights deal for the 2024-25 sports activities yr and past, and the current defections make touchdown a profitable one amid transitional occasions in TV extra problematic.
For soccer, basketball and even girls’s indoor volleyball, convention realignment will evoke profound ramifications to schedules and journey.
However will NCAA seashore volleyball be equally affected?
In all probability not.
Seaside volleyball stays within the formative phases, with roughly 20% of the greater than 300 colleges which have Division I girls’s indoor groups sanctioning the sand sport. The overwhelming majority of the seashore applications are positioned in coastal states and most are in warm-weather climates, just about a necessity because it’s a spring sport that runs from late February by means of the NCAA Championships in early Might.
The highest groups all just about play one another in multi-squad weekend competitions, so realignment seemingly can have little impact on scheduling. Packages are restricted to 16 aggressive occasions through the common season, which many collegiate coaches contend shouldn’t be sufficient, and groups sometimes will mess around 30-32 duals.
Within the brief time period, the 2024 seashore season ought to be enterprise as common, because the Pac-12 exodus received’t hit till the 2024-25 sports activities yr that begins within the fall. The most important quick query is the standing of the Coastal Collegiate Sports activities Affiliation, which is all the way down to 4 groups after TCU and Missouri State joined Convention USA.
The CCSA’s 4 remaining applications are LSU, Florida State, Grand Canyon and South Carolina, all of which have been ranked among the many high 17 within the closing 2023 AVCA seashore ballot, so the league has robust underpinnings. Nonetheless, the CCSA wants so as to add a minimum of two groups to maintain its automated bid to the NCAA Championship. One attainable addition could be Texas, which in its second season on the sand intends to ratchet up its recruiting of beach-only athletes after snaring Stein Metzger as its coach. Metzger loved super success at UCLA, together with two NCAA championships and two nationwide runners-up finishes.
Looking forward to 2025 supplies a greater diversity of potentialities. The breakup of the Pac-12 looms massive as a result of the convention is loaded with powerhouse applications. The one groups to win NCAA titles because the sport performed its first NCAA nationwide championships in 2016 have been USC (2016, ‘17, ‘21, ‘22 and ‘23) and UCLA (2018 and ‘19). Of the Pac-12’s 9 seashore applications, six have been ranked among the many high 20 within the closing 2023 AVCA ballot and 4 performed within the 17-team NCAA Championships.
The Massive Ten (Nebraska has a group that performs a restricted schedule), Massive 12, SEC and ACC don’t sanction seashore volleyball. One possibility for the 9 current Pac-12 members in 2025 merely could be to play as independents. Below that state of affairs, the NCAAs would have one fewer automated bid and the indies wouldn’t get pleasure from taking part in in a convention match.
Another could be for the Pac-12 groups to fold into present all-sports conferences that sponsor seashore volleyball as affiliate members. USC and UCLA may be part of Southern California rivals Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine within the West Coast Convention. Washington and Oregon may hop into the Massive West. Stanford and Cal may go into both.
A chance for Arizona, Arizona State and Utah could possibly be the CCSA, which sponsors competitors in seashore volleyball and males’s and ladies’s swimming and diving. Or may the MPSF (Mountain Pacific Sports activities Federation, by which Pac-12 colleges compete in water polo and males’s volleyball) add seashore?
However now let’s contemplate what may occur if the Massive Ten have been to get on board with seashore volleyball. USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington and Nebraska would have groups, though the Huskers squad at current serves extra as a coaching various for its powerhouse indoor program.
Another college from the 18-member Massive Ten could be all that’s wanted to be a acknowledged convention with presumably an automated NCAA bid. The Massive Ten has quite a few indoor applications with rabid fan bases which may make seashore a viable possibility. One coach informed us privately if that faculty provides seashore it should have a totally separate workers and program or it’s a no-go.
What concerning the Massive 12?
TCU may return house from C-USA and could be joined to Arizona State, Arizona, Utah, and maybe displaced Stanford and Cal as associates. Proper there’s a robust six-team league that would argue for an automated bid.
However even with these potentialities, the basic nature of school seashore volleyball doesn’t determine to seriously change. The “haves” — USC, UCLA, TCU, Florida State, LSU, Loyola Marymount, Hawaii — are extremely more likely to proceed to populate the highest half of the weekly high 20, the subsequent degree would be the scrappy underdogs and the underside third can have enjoyable taking part in towards one another.
