Vouching for Volleyball

Over the past week or so I've taken a break from my regularly scheduled MLB obsession to watch as much Summer Olympics content as possible. While I'm still following the Braves closely, the time I'd normally reserve for MLB Tonight on MLB Network has been replaced with whatever NBC and NBC Sports Network choose to air in prime time.  And while I love to watch the Olympics staples such as gymnastics, swimming and track and field, the sport that I've enjoyed the most so far has - surprisingly - been indoor volleyball.  The more I watch both the men and the women compete, the more I wonder why volleyball hasn't caught on as a professional sport in the United States.

This isn't to say that volleyball has so place in the American sports landscape.  Beach volleyball and the AVP Tour are reasonably popular and some of the athletes (like Olympians Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings) are relatively well known, but I'd argue that the sport's popularity is more about seeing good looking shirtless men and bikini-clad women run around on the beach than it is about the competition itself.  There's no professional indoor volleyball league, however - according to Wikipedia, the last attempt at an indoor volleyball league went under in the mid 2000s.  The Americn Pro Volleyball League (APVL) is trying to get men's indoor volleyball off the ground again in the U.S., but with a website that looks like this I doubt they're going to be very successful.

But try watching some Olympic indoor volleyball and you'll see many of the same elements that have made basketball so popular in the United States.  Volleyball players display the same types of athleticism that have fans cheering at NBA games - the diving digs and soaring spikes are volleyball's versions of bsaketball's perfect passes and big blocks.  Like basketball, volleyball creates room and roles for players of all sizes - smaller guys are the setters and floor generals (like point guards) and the biggest guys are mainly responsible for blocking (like centers).  The best athletes get the biggest cheers when they spike the ball at speeds in excess of 100 mph, just like basketball's forwards are often known for their ability to dunk.  Add on the fact that volleyball also lends itself well to statistics - spikes, blocks and digs are kept just like points, assists and rebounds - and I'm surprised that indoor volleyball seemingly has no U.S. market.

Earlier this week, ESPN's Bill Simmons wrote an article about handball and compared that sport to basketball.  In it, he writes "we didn't even make it to halftime before we started wondering things like, 'Why isn't handball more popular?' and 'Why isn't America better at handball?'"  I have very similar thoughts about indoor volleyball.  Unlike handball, however, volleyball is a well known sport in the U.S.  Many kids grow up playing volleyball recreationally and the game is a fairly popular competitive sport for male and female high school and college athletes.  While bringing handball to the U.S. would require teaching thousands of people a new game, most young athletes know at least the basics of volleyball.  So why isn't the line from big time college volleyball player to professional athlete more established?  Watch some Olympic volleyball this week and I bet you'll be asking yourself the same question.