Collegiate sports will soon witness the most dramatic shakeup of the top athletic conferences in decades, with the Power 5 conferences becoming the Power 4 (goodbye Pac-12 🙁).
Volleyball Recruiting Geography in the new ACC
The expanded ACC reaches from coast to coast with a new outpost in Texas and two on the Pacific Coast, with the addition of SMU, Cal, and Stanford. Overall, the old ACC recruited strongly from the Midwest (and to a lesser extent, Florida and Southern California). SMU’s distinctively Texas-centric and Cal’s California-centric recruiting patterns stand out as unusual additions to the community of ACC volleyball players.
Volleyball Recruiting Geography in the new Big Ten
While the ACC geography of volleyball recruiting has changed noticeably, the Big 10 recruiting geography is even more altered with 4 Pac-12 teams joining the conference in 2024. Washington and Oregon are distinctive in drawing the top talent from the Pacific Northwest, along with having a strong SoCal presence, and USC and UCLA are even more concentrated in their SoCal draws.
Volleyball Recruiting Geography in the new Big 12
Compared to the changes in the ACC and Big 10, the changes to the Big 12 recruiting map are somewhat less dramatic. All Pac-12 teams recruit a lot of players from California, but these four Pac-12 schools (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah) draw the least from California. Instead, they recruit more from states like Arizona and Texas, and the Midwest. That being said, the geography of recruiting in the new Big 12, like the new ACC and Big 10, covers more of the country now.
Volleyball Recruiting Geography in the new SEC
The SEC will change the least in 2024, since it did not add any Pac-12 schools. The two new colleges, Texas and Oklahoma, fit right into the SEC recruiting wise. They both draw slightly more from Southern California and Hawaii, in addition to their home state pull, but overall the map does not look much different from its predecessor.
