Pitt's New AD, Listen Up: Volleyball Is a Startup Worth Your Investment
The athletic department's stock portfolio need not only include football and basketball
Pitt provided a warm (77 degrees in late October? Oo boy.) welcome to its new director of athletics Allen Greene on Wednesday. His first impression first-impressed me. Greene said the right things while letting his personality shine. One main message: He wants to spend the first few months on the job listening and learning before making any major decisions.
"There's a reason why you have two ears and one mouth,” Greene said.
If I had one of his ears for a moment, I would make this request of the new AD: invest in women’s volleyball. Whatever Dan Fisher’s vision is for his volleyball program in the next few years, as the sport's winningest coach of the last half-decade, believe in him.
Now, of course I would say that as a Pitt Volleyball fan and now twice-weekly-email-sender. I believe in the program, yes, but I also believe in the opportunities that exist when successful women’s sports teams are supported, platformed and given what they need to thrive.
You know the stats by now on the court (on the Taralfex?) — Three straight Final Fours. Five ACC Championships. Now a #1 ranking.
But one answer Greene gave in his otherwise-optimistic introductory press conference (and free advice: do more media, you’re good at it) gave me pause. The full question and answer:
Susan Jones, University Times: "How much does the success of non-revenue sports, volleyball, soccer, how much does that help you do your job in raising money?"
Greene: “Well it certainly makes people feel good. I’m a product of one of those non-revenue sports. I think we had maybe our parents and a couple girlfriends in the stands when I was playing baseball 100 years ago. It’s definitely — it helps make people feel good. But we also know that football and men’s basketball are going to be the drivers, and I want to make sure that those programs are set up and built for success, not just in the conference, but nationally.”
The response got an online applause and a Family Feud-style “good answer, good answer” from Pitt fans. It’s true on the face: football and men’s basketball have the most revenue potential. You need to make your money there and provide the largest chunk of NIL there, an area where Pitt has fallen behind too many other schools.
But the other sports are only around to make people feel good?
With apologies to my sisters (both of them champion swimmers), we’re not talking about throwing money after Swimming & Diving. Volleyball has the juice.
Since the new AD brought up men’s basketball, let’s take a look at their following on Instagram, the biggest platform for college teams:
Pitt Men’s Basketball: 42,700 followers
Pitt Volleyball: 66,500 followers (55% more)
Two men’s basketball players with over 7,500 followers
Five volleyball players with over 7,500 followers (Cat Flood, Torrey Stafford, Valeria Vázquez Gomez, Olivia Babcock and Rachel Fairbanks — Greene met all of them yesterday)
Well that’s social media, and anyone can hit a follow button, so how about attendance?
If Pitt can get a couple thousand more ticket purchasers — as I expect they will — for the big rivalry match against Louisville on Friday, that will mean the volleyball team provided two (count ‘em, two!) sellouts at the Pete this season compared to the men’s basketball team’s one from last season.
Yes, volleyball tickets are cheaper. Yes, students can (and did) roll in without needing to pre-purchase a Gold Pass. Regardless, a sellout is a sellout, and any sports administrator should be able to find a way to capitalize on a full 12,000-seat arena.
You can draw college sports into categories like a diverse stock portfolio:
Football is your S&P 500 index fund — Put most of your money there.
Men’s basketball is your blue chip growth stock — Higher risk but could pay significant dividends.
Volleyball is the tech startup — The company is not making a profit on the balance sheet right now, but oh the possibilities.
Girls’ volleyball has more than 479,000 student-athletes, comfortably in 2nd place for girls' participation (behind only Track and Field) and still growing by thousands more each year. Today’s volleyball players become tomorrow’s volleyball ticket buyers.
“It’s not niche anymore,” coach Dan Fisher told an AP reporter writing about the rise of college volleyball. “It’s truly mainstream.”
Mainstream means TV, and volleyball’s growth there is unquestioned. Viewership on ESPN platforms soared 58% higher last season, and the NCAA just changed the format for the NCAA Tournament to be more TV-friendly — with ESPN upgrading Elite 8 matches from ESPNU to ESPN2. At a time when linear TV viewership is generally on a steady decline, executives have noticed volleyball’s rising star — tripling the number of matches on broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, FOX) for 2024.
And I can bet that TV executives aren’t simply doing it to make people feel good.
Back on attendance, the seven biggest standalone crowds in NCAA regular-season history have come in the past three seasons — headlined by the 92,003 at Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium last year.
The Nebraska program’s history demonstrates that turning a profit in college volleyball is possible. The Huskers are an outlier, and I don’t expect a bunch of programs to start becoming revenue-generators, but I also believe Pitt has the rare window to join the club.
The Panthers currently boast the number one recruiting class for 2026, and here’s what Coach Fisher (along with his rizz master Kellen Petrone) is no doubt promising them:
A spot on the most consistent winning program of the last five years
The opportunity to play in the best volleyball conference in the nation (Hey, his words)
A brand-new Victory Heights facility to practice and compete in, regardless of it being an imprudent financial decision to build the place
Everything else that a Pitt education and experience can offer
Athletic Director Greene: diversify your portfolio, keep building Pitt Volleyball into a revenue-generating brand, bring fresh ideas, live your own words that “for those people who say it's not possible, go cheer for a different school.”
He says that he’ll be listening, I take him at his word. And when 12,000 fans fill the Pete this Friday night for volleyball, Allen Greene will have two ears to hear a sellout crowd roar.