Column: Big Ten realignment spotlights football, but Big Ten Volleyball is the best conference in the NCAA

CHICAGO - The usual superlatives aren’t enough for John Cook. Not anymore. 

The four-time Big Ten Coach of the Year and the three-time American Volleyball Coaches Association National Coach of the Year has won plenty of awards as Nebraska’s head coach. He knows how to win.

When he says the Big Ten will be hard to compete in this season, it’s not just the usual coach speak.

In fact, Cook wants some newer awards to reflect that.

"I don't think anybody is going to go undefeated, let's put it that way," Cook said. "And if they do, they're going to deserve "Coach of the Century" and "Team of the Century" because it's going to be really challenging."

The Big Ten’s realignment has now brought Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA to the fold. It was a move that followed Texas and Oklahoma’s move to the SEC and signed the Pac-12’s death warrant.

In a conference that now stretches coast-to-coast, the focus has been on football. But, football is far from the most electric thing the latest realignment has wrought.

Through that realignment, the Big Ten has created a powerhouse volleyball conference that is the best conference across all of college sports.

"It just makes our conference that much stronger," Purdue head coach Dave Shondell said. "That's what we're trying to do at the Big Ten, be the best."

The Big Ten has been a volleyball powerhouse for decades.

Since 2000, there have been just five years where the Big Ten did not have a representative in the volleyball tournament’s Final Four. Big Ten teams won the national championship in nine of those years.

Nebraska made the Final Four in the earlier years in the 2000s, but I didn’t count then since they weren’t officially a Big Ten team at that point. If you want to count Nebraska, and feel free to, then there’s just one year when the Big Ten did not have a representative in the Final Four.

That’s not just good. It’s nearly unheard of. Having that much consistency in the Final Four is what a conference dreams of.

Now, with the four West Coast schools in the fold, the Big Ten can claim 15 more Final Four appearances between Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA.

In 2023, the Big Ten had four teams win 20 or more games and earn a top-25 ranking. The PAC-12 had four teams with 20 or more wins and five teams ranked in the top 25. Between these nine ranked teams, eight of them finished the regular season ranked in the top 16. 

In other words, buckle up.

The Big Ten volleyball season is going to feature matchups that have a gravitational pull triple than the average Big Ten football game considering how much is at stake in every game. Like football, Big Ten volleyball will play each team once and that’s it. The next time they see the same conference opponent for a rematch might be the NCAA Tournament.

The idea of USC taking on Michigan or Oregon taking on Ohio State in football is enough to make anyone willing to fast forward into the fall. Imagine that, but nearly every week for Big Ten volleyball.

This isn’t hyperbole. This is what’s going to happen.

"That's where our sport is going, is people are starting to understand how different styles are and they would like to see those matchups," Oregon coach Matt Ulmer said. "Now, all of a sudden, I think you're going to get some of those fantasy matchups coming in, and we're going to get them regularly.

There needs to be plenty figured out first. Such as the travel the conference expects to weigh on its volleyball athletes, which will have some teams going coast-to-coast just to play a conference game in September.

The Big Ten has found a solution to that, making midwestern or East coast teams play two of the West-coast schools in succession. That way, travel is reduced and players aren’t spending more time in the air than playing a game.

"I really believe that scheduling is something that has to be constantly evaluated by sport, and I anticipate that we'll get hopefully a lot more right these next couple of years with the way we've formatted and scheduled," Big Ten Commissioner Tony Pettiti said at Big Ten football media days. "It's our responsibility and our job to listen to student-athletes, to listen to coaches to make sure that we're adjusting and making the changes we need."

Keeping volleyball at the center of this is paramount for the Big Ten. No other conference held a media day for its volleyball teams outside of the Big Ten, and that’s because the Big Ten knows how important volleyball is.

Look no further than Nebraska as a whole last year, where the Huskers’ Volleyball Day in Nebraska set a world record for women's sports attendance with 92,003 attending an exhibition match at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska, between the Huskers and the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

This was one of the peaks in the rising tides around women’s sports, which the Big Ten has overseen with Caitlin Clark’s final season at Iowa in the 2023-2024 basketball season.

The Big Ten has a chance to push that excitement further this volleyball season.

It’s not just for the casual fan, either. The biggest volleyball fans will watch a league with varying play styles go at it for three months, as the Big Ten combines athletic West coast volleyball schemes with terrific defensive schemes, like what Nebraska plays, in the same conference. 

"We're just going to get to see teams play against each other that we haven't seen a lot," Nebraska junior setter Kennedi Orr said. "A lot of teams when I was growing up, were winning National Championships like UCLA, Washington, and now we get to see them integrated in the Big Ten, and I think that's really cool. I haven't gotten to a lot of Big Ten play, like West Coast teams a lot in the past. I'm just really excited to see the competition. It's going to be an insane year."

Insane is correct. At the end of it all, someone’s going to have to win a Big Ten championship.

Who will that be? Stay tuned to find out.

It’ll be some of the best volleyball you’ll see outside of Paris this year.

"This is going to bring out the best in what we have, and we'll give it our best shot," Cook said. "I’s exciting for college sports."