Q&A with the Big Ten's Grace McNamara

The Big Ten Conference wrapped up its fifth annual Media Day on Monday. The league remains the only one to host an in-person media day with all its members. (The Big 12 does a remote, glorified TV special it labels as a media day.) The Big Ten switched the format from two half days with a dinner reception to one long day with two sessions.

At the end of the event, we sat down with Grace McNamara, the Big Ten’s Senior Director for Television Administration and the league’s volleyball sport administrator, to talk about the Big Ten Tournament, playing volleyball at Wrigley Field and more. 

The following conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

Year Five! Now that we’ve made it through the day, how did it go from your perspective?

I think it went well. It’ll be interesting to see what the feedback is. It’s always good to try new formats. The way it works out rotation-wise, it’s either one longer day like this with more breaks, or you do two half days where it’s really consecutive interviews for everyone.

One of the big talking points is that the Big Ten Tournament is back. Take me back: a year ago, we talked about this, and you said we’re open to all ideas. When did you finally say we’re doing this, let’s start planning?

There’s never been a more highly debated topic than this Big Ten volleyball tournament since I’ve started with this group. It’s always been a topic of conversation, and we did ultimately decide to move forward with one. The plan was to start it in 2027. We got into our coaches’ meeting in February and outlined the plan, the timeline, and the coaches said, “Well, what do we think about ’26? We said, “We’ll think about it. We’ll take a look at it.” We were able to make it happen. We didn’t want to do it if it wasn’t going to be a world-class event. We wanted to make sure that we had the location, the planning, the staffing, and the commitment from our teams to make this what we believe is going to be a really special tournament in the inaugural year.

How big was finding the venue? Because you’re at that point, you were looking eight, nine months out to find a venue that’s the appropriate size, in the appropriate location, with a week available. Was that challenging at all?

It was. We had done a formal RFP process for 2027, so thankfully we were in touch with a lot of the venues that we were looking at for this event, and we were able to work with them on ’26. But as you know, things get booked out years in advance, and the two weeks that we were looking at were the traditional last week of the season, which is over Thanksgiving, or the week we ended up on, which is the week prior. So around a holiday, eight to nine months out, and we need the venue for a considerable length of time. This isn’t a two-day event, so yes, we’re working up against some constraints. But again, we’re very excited and pleased with where we landed at Fishers (Event Center). We work really closely with (Indiana Sports Corp) for a number of our events — football championship game, often our basketball tournaments, we do other Olympic sport events there, and they’re the home of the (MLV’s Indy) Ignite. They’re used to doing volleyball, so we wanted to make sure that we were moving forward with a group that we felt would give this the attention and gravitas that it deserves.

What about Fishers that will serve the Big Ten well?

Fishers is a fantastic community. I’m really excited for fans to go there because it’s just north of Indy, and I think people don’t know a ton about it, but it’s got a lot to do. There are great restaurants. They’re really into women’s sports there, so I think the community is honestly a perfect fit for what we’re looking for. It’s in the Midwest, close to obviously Purdue, Indiana. I think people are going to be really excited about Fishers, so I’m excited for people to see it.

The other part of this is playing a tournament, giving opportunities for teams to win their way into the NCAA tournament, but also not making it so onerous for the top seeds to have to play five, six matches before they then go to the NCAA tournament. How did you land on the format for this year’s tournament?

We’ve talked about this for so many years that we’ve looked at a ton of different formats, and the feedback from our coaches that concern over rest and recovery headed into NCAA’s has come up a lot, which is why we strategically have an off day in our tournament, which you do not see in the Power Four that have tournaments. The format we landed on is the top four seeds get a double bye. They would play one match, and then if they advance, it’s an off day, and then they would play in a semi and a final. That was very strategic from a rest-and-recovery standpoint. We looked at that with athletic trainers and our chief medical officer. We’ve gone through a lot of iterations of different formats, and we landed on one that we think is best for the health and safety of our student-athletes and their well-being. 

The press release came out today (Monday). How massive was it to get that window on Fox for that championship match? Wednesday night, prime time, Big Fox.

So huge. If you look at what’s on TV that night, it’s a heavy entertainment night, and to get a sporting event on that day in and of itself is a hurdle. Let alone to get a women’s volleyball match. This is the first time that a conference women’s volleyball tournament match will be on a broadcast network. We really want to emphasize the importance of that and just the growth and trajectory of the sport, and the demonstrated ratings that we were able to secure that type of a window for a first-year event is a really big deal.

Not only are you adding the Big Ten Tournament, but you’re also adding this event at Wrigley Field that the Big Ten is hosting too. I’m sure in a perfect world you’re not doing both in the same year. But how long has it been in the works to host an event like that?

So that has been in the works for a while now. We did Frozen Confines with the Cubs (in 2025). We’ve had such a great relationship with them—so that was our hockey series. We did women’s hockey and men’s hockey, which is a Big Ten-sponsored sport, and wanted to continue on that momentum. The Wrigley Field match is part of the Big Ten-SEC Challenge, so all 18 of our Big Ten teams and all 16 SEC teams are competing for Big Ten-SEC Challenge Week, culminating with the Wrigley Field match. A lot of really thoughtful planning to match up our teams from both conferences from a geographical standpoint, RPI standpoint, and strength-of-schedule standpoint, and we collaborated really closely with the SEC to land on some of those opportunities. It’s being broadcast across both of our network partners. For us, matches are on Fox, FS1, Big Ten Network, and streamed on B1G+ and on the SEC side, they’re having matches on ESPN and affiliate networks, SEC Network and SEC Network+. It’s been a really great way to join together two conferences to get the most competitive matchups to the most eyeballs, is the way we’re looking at it, and we’re excited to continue with this in 2027.

Continue with the SEC-Big Ten Challenge? 

Yes, that will go on. We are committed to one more year. It’s a two-year deal. Again, we’re hosting the marquee event this year, and they will host next year.

Worst-case scenario, what is the backup plan? What will determine whether or not you can make sure you can have this outdoors? Because there are a lot of weather factors that you’re bringing in.

We have a weather contingency plan that we’ve worked on with a number of different stakeholders, both of our coordinators and the NCAA. Obviously, we’ve worked with Wrigley. We’ve worked with beach volleyball and applied some of the same philosophies. We have a really thought-out weather contingency plan. We also have a backup venue in Wintrust Arena. In the event that it’s a complete rainout and we need to transition to an indoor venue, we have a backup at Wintrust. We also have the Monday of Labor Day weekend reserved. If we need to push to Monday off of the Sunday, we’re able to do that, and with the goal of, of course, getting the matches at Wrigley.

Is rain going to be the only determinant? Is there a certain wind threshold that is going to be a determinant?

Wind is part of the planning for air quality. We’ve seen a lot of that this summer. Humidity. There are a number of factors that we’ve got listed out in a green, yellow, red type of scenario. We’ll have a committee established that can decide if we’re one mile per hour off on the wind, maybe we just do it. There are some contingency plans for all scenarios, but it’s definitely been really top-of-mind part of the development.

Volleyball is different than a lot of sports where the big teams aren’t afraid to play the other Big Ten teams. The AVCA is hosting events. Does the Big Ten want to get in more events besides the tournament? Do they want to be in the business of events and putting on these showcase events?

Yes. A priority of our commissioner is to push our staff to see how we continue to raise the bar. How do we, as the Big Ten, own these types of events and put on more of this? It’s definitely something that is in our wheelhouse. You see the events we put on for our football championship game, our men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. How do we continue to push the envelope and bring this to the next level in our Olympic sports and this is a very good indication of how that will go.

You’re bringing back the Discover Challenge for its second year. What was the feedback on that, and what made you want to bring it back? What can fans look forward to this year?

We are so thrilled to bring back the Discover Challenge. It was a first-of-its-kind challenge. We love to see brands interested in activating around volleyball. It’s a really fun way in the month of October to generate interest. We see from data and trends that people are really watching toward the end of the season, and this is a really fun way to keep our fans engaged in that early to middle part of conference play. Our coaches had a ton of fun with it last year. I’ve got a picture of (Purdue coach) Dave Shondell holding the Discover Challenge signage up. They tied with Nebraska, but lost the tiebreaker. Our coaches are getting into it. Our student-athletes are getting into it, so we’re excited to help it grow and continue to have more visibility in such a big year for the Big Ten.

What are issues that coaches are worried about?

Volleyball dialogs today about the calendar, recruiting calendar, and also the ramp-up period for preseason, so I think that’s something that our coaches are being really thoughtful about. What makes sense for student-athletes from a health and wellness standpoint, and also for the overall health of the sport from a recruiting perspective? Looking at that calendar and making sure that it’s helping high school athletes make the best decisions for themselves. We had really good discussions with a couple of our coaches around the steering committee. We have a representative in Elizabeth Heinrich from Michigan on the (NCAA) oversight committee. Charlie Fuerbringer is a student-athlete on that committee as well. So we have some good Big Ten voices in the room, but it’s always great to hear directly from our coaches what is going to make a difference for them.

One of the coaches today said that most of the coaches were for the tournament, but not all of them were. Is there a lot of convincing them, or is it like, ‘This is what we’re doing. You got to get with the majority of the conferences? Or do you let the coaches handle those discussions?

In the case of adding a tournament, it was a vote. They certainly have a say in it, but my job as a sport administrator is to push the innovation, to push change, to push growth, and that’s not always comfortable. I’m sure there have been situations where they didn’t know what to expect, but that’s part of my role and our role as the Big Ten is to push — push us to continue to succeed, continue to dominate.

What will make the 2026 year a successful year for Big Ten volleyball?

A national championship would be nice. How do we define success is a good question. More teams in the tournament, a national championship, viewership records. It’s already starting with some of these events and these innovations. It actually starts today. It starts with Media Day. Honestly, this is the start of our season, and we’ve got a lot to look forward to in 2026.