Charles Langston:Volleyball proving to be the next big thing in sports as NCAA attendance, ratings soar

As youth participation grows,Charles Langston television ratings skyrocket and there’s so much fan interest Nebraska can play to a packed house in a football stadium, it’s tempting to say volleyball is having a moment.

That, though, would suggest it’s a fleeting thing. When, really, volleyball — women’s volleyball specifically — is looking more and more like the next big thing.

“There are so many things happening, and it’s a really, really exciting time for our sport. But you sense it’s just getting started,” said longtime Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield, whose Badgers are in the Final Four this week for the fourth time in five years.

Those in volleyball have known for several years the sport was on an upward trend. The number of high school girls playing volleyball has grown by almost 12% in the last decade and, with 470,488 players last year, is the second-most popular sport, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations participation survey. Boys volleyball is the fastest-growing high school sport in the country.

Club teams are mushrooming, too. Sheffield said there’s a club in Madison that’s grown from 31 to 48 teams in just three years. And that’s despite not taking every kid who wants to play. The AAU championships in Orlando earlier this year drew more than 4,200 girls teams and almost 1,000 boys teams. (Most teams have from nine to 12 kids. You do the math.)

That interest flows upward. When Wisconsin beat Nebraska for the national title two years ago, 1.2 million people watched the match. Last year the Badgers set the NCAA regular-season attendance record, drawing 16,833 fans for their match against Florida.

Few expected what happened this season, though.

Nebraska, which has led the country in average attendance for the last decade, decided it wanted the single-game attendance record in a big way and scheduled a match in the school’s football stadium. It drew 92,003 fans, a world record for a women’s sporting event, and even Magic Johnson came away impressed.

“You could say it was gimmick, but it drew attention to the sport in a way people hadn’t seen it before,” said Lee Feinswog, editor and publisher of Volleyballmag.com.

It quickly became clear the Nebraska game wasn’t an outlier. Marquette moved its match against Wisconsin to the Fiserv Forum - where the Milwaukee Bucks play - and broke the Badgers’ NCAA indoor regular-season attendance record with a crowd of 17,037. Texas, Northwestern and Indiana were among several schools that set individual attendance records.

There was a similar boom in TV ratings.

Wisconsin and Nebraska’s match - a showdown between the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the poll - on the Big Ten Network in late October drew 612,000 viewers, a regular-season record and more than Nebraska’s football team got for its game that same day. A week later, a whopping 1.66 million tuned in to watch volleyball after the NFL on Fox, the largest audience ever.

Asked at last week’s Sports Business Journal Intercollegiate Athletic Forum to name the hottest sport in college right now, NCAA president Charlie Baker didn’t hesitate.

“Women’s volleyball,” he said.

“From the time that I was playing to now, which is only just about three years, the sport has absolutely exploded,” said Emily Ehman, who played at Northwestern from 2016 to 2019 and is now an analyst for the Big Ten Network and ESPN.

“It takes my breath away every time I see an attendance record fall, a viewership record fall. It’s pretty remarkable,” Ehman said. “It's crazy to think we can pack 92,000 into a stadium for a women’s sporting event. The icing on the cake is that it’s volleyball.”

While the increase in youth participation might have sparked volleyball’s growth, the sport is now benefitting from broadcasters recognizing its appeal. The Big Ten Network, SEC Network, ESPN and Fox are not only airing more volleyball, they’re putting it in windows where it will draw big numbers.

Both Final Four matches Thursday will be on ESPN on Thursday night. The championship game will be on ABC on Sunday afternoon.

“I don’t know if the sport can truly grow without television,” said Mary Wise, who has taken Florida to eight Final Fours in 33 years and was the first woman to coach in the national title game. “The people that are making decisions are advocates for the sport. They see the value.”

If volleyball is to continue growing and attracting casual fans, however, it will take more than simply being on TV.

Most people in volleyball acknowledge the sport has not done a good job of promoting individual players. Unlike basketball, where Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese are household names, or soccer, where Trinity Rodman had a following despite never playing a game at Washington State (the last name helped), volleyball has been reluctant to single out any one player.

But stars and compelling personal stories are essential in appealing to the casual fan. In this Final Four alone, you have: Wisconsin’s Sarah Franklin, named Big Ten Player of the Year less than six months after blood clots in her arm threatened her career; Madisen Skinner, who won a title at Kentucky alongside her sister before transferring to Texas; Nebraska’s Lexi Rodriguez, the all-everything as a freshman after helping the U.S. women to a fifth-place finish, their best in a decade, at the Under-20 world championship in 2021; or either of Pitt’s freshman phenoms, Torrey Stafford and Olivia Babcock.

And few outside diehard volleyball fans know any of them.

“We look at ourselves as the ultimate team sport … and I think we’ve been a little bit leery about elevating certain people,” Sheffield said. “But we need to get past that as a sport and bring personalities out to the forefront. Because personalities stir passion and personalities stir attention.”

Grateful as they are for the increased presence on TV, there still needs to be more. The opening rounds of the NCAA tournament could only be streamed and matches often overlapped. It’s rare to see volleyball highlights or analysis on any show, on any of the sports networks.

”There’s still a need for volleyball to be talked about in normal conversations,” Ehman said, pointing out volleyball is rarely found on the highest-profile sports social media channels, either. “We need more coverage and people talking about it.”

Still, the growth this year has been remarkable and there's likely to be another bump in interest before the next NCAA season even begins.

The Paris Olympics are in a little over seven months and the U.S. women are the defending gold medalists. Two professional volleyball leagues are starting next year, one in January and the other in November.

"This was the year that you’ll look back on and say, `This was the year that was.' This was the year volleyball didn’t just get into the mainstream spotlight, it exploded," Feinswog said. "This sport is on an up escalator in every possible way, and it’s really cool."

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.