The Wrigley Night and the Unknown People Behind the Lights

There is a moment I can never forget—the echo of laughter across the stands—and this time it comes from a place volleyball has never touched. On September 6, 2026, when the ball is tossed at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, it will be the first time in history that a collegiate women's volleyball match is played there. I have sat for hours imagining it: not the dirt of a baseball diamond, but a lined court, a net, and above it the Chicago September sky. An empty stadium does not erase a match; it only turns applause into a longing shaped like a player quietly taking off her shoes—but this time, the stadium will not be empty. And I wonder: how many will remember the names of those who stayed up all night to turn a baseball field into an outdoor arena? The event is the Allstate Big Ten/SEC Volleyball Challenge Week, running from Tuesday, September 1, to Sunday, September 6, 2026. This is the inaugural challenge week between the two strongest collegiate athletic conferences in America: the Big Ten and the SEC. All 34 programs from both conferences will compete in 27 matchups across 10 host campuses—from Nashville to Ann Arbor, from Chicago to cities I have to check a map to recall. Allstate is the title sponsor in a two-year deal including in-venue branding and match-day activations at every site. The week closes with a Sunday doubleheader at Wrigley Field: at 7 p.m. ET, No. 3 Kentucky faces No. 13 Penn State; then at 9 p.m. ET, No. 1 Nebraska meets Missouri. Both air live on FOX. The earliest match of the week is Arkansas vs. Rutgers at 4 p.m. ET on SECN+ from Historic Memorial Gymnasium in Nashville. When I first read those lines, what made me pause was not the number 27, nor the names of the top teams. It was the detail about Wrigley Field. People remember a goal, but I remember most what happens after the lights go out—and here, the lights have never been turned on for this sport. A baseball stadium seating over forty thousand, where legends of baseball wrote history, will have to be adapted to host a volleyball match. Who does that work? Who measures the court? Who calculates the distance from the net to the first row so a ball does not hit a railing? Those people will never appear in any news report. A contract is signed in ink, but understood through countless sleepless nights of the people behind the numbers. I have followed American collegiate women's volleyball for many years, and I have learned that behind every ranking is an operating system the audience never sees. A match broadcast live on FOX requires hundreds of people: lighting technicians, camera operators, medical staff, guiding volunteers, and even those who fold the mops between sets. When I rewatch footage of any match, I always slow down at the set breaks, looking for the silent figures who walk onto the court and wipe the sweat streaks off the wood. They are not named, but without them the match would stop. I write about them, not because I love tragedy, but because I believe sports history is made by those who are never written into history. Interestingly, this week is not just one big match. There are 27 matches spread across 6 days—nearly 5 per day on average. This is a density of competition that anyone who follows college sports knows is brutal. For women's volleyball teams, a match lasts two to two and a half hours on average, plus warm-ups, tactical meetings, and travel. If a team must play two matches on consecutive days in two different cities, that is a test of both fitness and roster depth. And this is where I begin to notice the teams less often named. Arkansas enters the week 3-0 after sweeping SIUE, UTA and UTSA at home last weekend. It is a clean start, but I must be honest: those three opponents are not highly rated, and a 3-0 record against such opponents says little about Arkansas's true strength. This is the blind spot of collective memory: we remember round numbers and forget the context behind them. A team that wins 3-0 may be playing very well, or may simply be enjoying an easy schedule. I do not rush to conclude. I only note it, and wait. Meanwhile, the highest-ranked teams bring a different weight to this week. Nebraska is No. 1 nationally. Kentucky is No. 3. Penn State is No. 13. These three represent programs with long traditions and tactical systems built over generations of coaches. When they step onto Wrigley Field, they are not just playing a match—they carry a heritage. But I wonder: will that heritage be fully conveyed through a television frame, or will it be distorted by stage lights and the noise of a baseball stadium? Missouri is the only one of the four Wrigley night teams not ranked in the top 25. They will face Nebraska—the No. 1 team nationally—in the latest match, at 9 p.m. ET on FOX. It is a clear mismatch. But sport does not operate by rankings. I have witnessed too many times teams written off stepping onto the court with nothing to lose, creating moments no one could script. If Missouri wins a set against Nebraska, that is already a story. If they win the match, it will be one of those moments remembered for years. And if they lose 3-0 as predicted, no one will remember them. That is the cruelty of elite sport: you are only remembered when you do something extraordinary. I do not want to turn Missouri into a symbol of weakness, because doing so would insult them. They are a collegiate team with full facilities, professional coaching staffs, and athletes who have trained for years. They do not need my pity. They need a chance to prove themselves—and this week gives them that chance, on the biggest stage collegiate women's volleyball has ever had. I will watch that match not to see by how much Nebraska wins, but to see what Missouri does with its opportunity. There is another aspect of this week I want to spend time analyzing: the density of competition and how it affects match quality. With 27 matches in 6 days, participating teams face enormous physical pressure. In volleyball, a key player may perform hundreds of jumps and landings in a single match. Compounded across many matches in a week, injury risk rises significantly. Coaches will have to rotate lineups more, give younger players opportunities, and sometimes accept a trade-off between match results and the health of key players. This is a tactical problem no one sees on television, yet it decides much of the week's outcome. I once spoke with a strength coach of a collegiate volleyball team, and he told me something I have never forgotten: "In a week like this, the team with the best depth wins, not the team with the brightest star." That is a perspective I think many fans overlook. We tend to focus on the players who score the most, but in a dense tournament, the winner is often the one who manages energy best. And that requires a system, not just an individual. On the commercial side, the two-year sponsorship deal with Allstate is a notable signal. It shows sponsors see growth potential in American collegiate women's volleyball. The fact that the two biggest matches air on FOX is also an indicator of the sport's media value. However, I do not want to fall into the trap of praising commercialization as something purely positive. When money flows into sport, it brings expectations of revenue, viewership ratings, and return on investment. And those expectations can create pressure on young athletes who simply want to play volleyball. I wonder whether a 19-year-old preparing to step onto Wrigley Field feels the weight of all this. Does she know that behind the FOX lights is a vast operating machine, that every play of hers will be analyzed by thousands, that her performance will affect rankings, national tournament chances, and the reputation of an entire program? Perhaps she knows. Or perhaps she is only thinking about how to get the ball over the net. I hope it is the latter. Because that is what matters most in volleyball: one play, one moment, and nothing else. As I write these lines, the week has not begun. But I am already thinking about what will remain after it ends. Perhaps a few moments will spread on social media. Perhaps a spike will be mentioned in sports broadcasts. Perhaps a small team will create an upset. But most of what happens in those 6 days will sink into oblivion, like every other sports week. And that is not sad—it is the nature of sport. Each match is a moment, and each moment is enough in itself. What I want to emphasize is that the value of this week does not lie in the final result. It lies in collegiate women athletes getting to play on a stage they have never had before. It lies in a legendary baseball stadium opening its doors to another sport. It lies in 34 programs together creating an event with no precedent. That is a signal that women's volleyball is heading in the right direction—not in terms of revenue or branding, but in terms of opportunity. I will not say this week will forever change collegiate women's volleyball. I do not have enough data to claim that, and I do not want to bet on something I cannot prove. But I can say that on September 6, 2026, when the ball is tossed at Wrigley Field, there will be a moment that someone—a player, a coach, or a fan—will remember forever. And that moment will belong to them, not to the rankings, not to the sponsor, not to television. Rostov-on-Don had only one night, but that night became a song I sing forever. Wrigley Field will also have only one night for volleyball. I do not know what song that night will become. But I know I will be there, watching, taking notes, and keeping what others will forget. When the week ends, there will be winning teams and losing teams. There will be players who shine and those who quietly leave the court. There will be updated statistics and short news lines on sports pages. But what interests me most is what happens after the final whistle—when the players walk off the court, when the stands begin to empty, when the mop crew folds their towels and the technicians turn off the lights. That is the moment I want to write about, not because it is sad, but because it is true. A retired player never leaves the court; she only steps into another realm, where only she and the past exist. And a sports week never truly ends; it only shifts into another form of existence: memory. I write this not to predict who will win. I write to remind myself that every sporting event, big or small, is made of people—and those people deserve to be remembered, even when they are never named. The question I leave for myself, and for anyone reading this: if you remember a match, what do you remember? Do you remember the score, or do you remember the feeling of watching someone do what they did not think they could do? If the answer is the latter, then perhaps this week will leave you something. And if so, it will have been worthy of the sleepless nights of all those who made it happen.