Volleyball in the Pac-16?

If you’re a college volleyball fan, then the Seattle Times headline Coming Soon: The Pac-16 may have started your gears turning. What happens if Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State join the Pac-12? (Does the idea turn your gears or turn your stomach?)

Although the Seattle Times' Bud Withers only mentions the possible impact on football (one early football idea: four four-team divisions), other team sports would also need some sort of divisional split. In particular, there are not enough weeks in the season to play home-and-home volleyball matches with the other 15 teams in a 16-team conference.

To me, it raises the exciting possibility of reconstructing the old Pac-8 conference, comprised of teams in states which actually border the Pacific Ocean. The remaining 8—desert, mountain and prairie states—would join the eastern division.

Each school, we suppose, would play every other team in its own division home-and-home, and play those in the other division once a season, alternating the home team every other year. We also assume the conference would still employ travel partners; Washington and WSU might travel one season to Arizona/ASU and to Oklahoma/OSU, facing Utah/Colorado and Texas/Texas Tech at home … then doing the opposite the next season.

Of course, a Pac-8 (western) volleyball division would be a killer: 6 of its teams (UW, Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC & Oregon) are currently ranked in the top 15, including 3 of the top 4. The non-ocean (eastern) division would have 800-pound gorilla Texas, plus a decent Oklahoma program. The imbalance would be worse than the current unevenness in Major League Soccer.

So what would you do? Here’s my west/east idea … what’s your plan if the conference adopts four more orphans? And what would you call them? Mine might be Blue State/Red State!

Pac-16 West		Pac-16 East
California		Arizona
Oregon		Arizona State
Oregon State		Colorado
Stanford		Oklahoma
UCLA		Oklahoma State
USC		Texas
Washington		Texas Tech
Washington State		Utah

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