College volleyball at Wrigley Field was beautiful and chaotic. It probably won't happen again.

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CHICAGO—Multiple things about Wrigley Field can be true at once.

I do not like the Chicago Cubs, but even I have to admit that Wrigley is an outstanding place to watch a baseball game. The skyline backdrop is excellent, the food has dramatically improved, and the unique residential character, history and aura is nearly unmatched in American professional sports. Even the garish commercial development around the ballpark, further turning Wrigleyville into one giant, upper-end suburban ball crawl, can’t rob the field of its character. It’s worth a visit.

That aura also makes Wrigley Field an outstanding place for almost any event. For my money, the best Christmas market in Chicago isn’t downtown by Daley Plaza; it’s at Wrigley. It’s a fun place to go ice skating. Hell, even corporate meetings at Wrigley are cool. The marquee, the ghosts of drunken Harry Caray shuffling around the belchers, the organ, the whole works … in a world where more and more professional stadiums are billion-dollar shopping malls plopped into suburban parking lots, Wrigley stands alone.

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So I understand why Fox, the Big Ten and the SEC wanted to play the finale of the inaugural Big Ten/SEC Volleyball Challenge right smack in the middle of the outfield of the Friendly Confines.

Would it be a compelling made-for-TV event? Sure. But it would also be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the participating athletes, and for tens of thousands of (mostly Nebraska) fans to witness another celebration of the ascension of women’s volleyball in a beautiful, historic venue.

I think that’s awesome. I want college conferences, schools and their commercial partners to try to create unique experiences for everybody involved. The idea was a very good one, which is why more than 43,000 people showed up to watch a high-level doubleheader. Penn State faced Kentucky first, followed by the powerhouse No. 1 Nebraska Cornhuskers against historic Big 8 rival Missouri in the nightcap.

Nebraska deserves a lot of credit for this event. Its historic Volleyball Day event in 2023 set a world record for the most fans to ever watch a women’s sporting event — more than 92,000 of them at Memorial Stadium. That event inspired copycats across the country, including at high schools in New York, Georgia and Ohio.

Outdoor volleyball is very much possible. But the event at Wrigley showed that while these games are unquestionably cool, they’re also very much an attempt to squeeze a round peg into a baseball diamond-shaped hole, and if everything doesn’t go perfectly, you have problems.

Let’s take the court itself. Rather than positioning itself along the first- or third-base line, the court was lined up square in the middle of the outfield. Behind it, a huge B1G display stood in dead center field. Surrounding the court were rows of field-level seating, plus some standing room only. The setup created an amazing backdrop for television, but for reporters in the press box, and for most of the fans sitting anywhere but the outfield bleachers, it robbed them of one of the best parts of watching an elite women’s volleyball match.

You just couldn’t get very close to the action. Smarter reporters than I brought binoculars. I didn’t, so I found myself checking the official broadcast, even though it was 30 seconds behind, to better understand how plays were developing or whether the ball had actually landed in or out of play.

If you wanted to attend the game for the total experience, or for the vibes, then it was perfect. If you wanted to watch elite competition and understand the players’ techniques … you’d probably have been better off watching on television.

But there was another, bigger, problem for the athletes.

The weather.

In some ways, it was about as perfect as anybody could expect in Chicago in early September. After a week of blistering heat, the temperature had cooled off to a more manageable 70ish degrees, and there was barely a cloud in the sky.

But Chicago in late summer, and especially in neighborhoods close to Lake Michigan, is humid. And as the sun went down and the evening cooled, that humidity led to moisture on the court. Moisture leads to slipping, potential injuries and unsafe playing conditions.

By the fourth set of the first match (Kentucky went on to win, 3-1), Kentucky and Penn State athletes started to slip.

“In warmups, we had in the sun in our eyes and could barely see the ball,” Kentucky’s Brooklyn DeLeye said. “Once that went away, we had the wind in effect … and then … it started getting really slippery out there, just from the heat and condensation. So I think it’s just also a cool thing that we were able to play [at Wrigley], but there were definitely some factors that were challenging.”

Shortly after the Nebraska-Missouri match began, players had to drop to their knees with towels to try to dry off the court. Sponsor patches were peeled off, air blowers were brought in, and play temporarily stopped. Athletes on both teams, along with the tens of thousands of fans, kept the energy high with an impromptu dance party. The stadium sang along to Mr. Brightside (and, since Missouri fans were there, they added lines about Kansas that are not fit to print in a family newsletter).

But before the first set ended, the match was suspended. It just wasn’t safe for the athletes.

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I don’t blame anybody with the Big Ten or Wrigley Field for this, but I do think it’s worth mentioning.

Last month, doctors told me the reason my knee pain wasn’t getting any better was because I had managed to both tear cartilage around my knee and sustain a stress fracture. If I wanted to avoid surgery (and woooboy I sure want to avoid a knee surgery because that would cost about $10,000), I’d need to remain as sedentary as possible. If I had to get up and walk around for work, I had to use crutches.

I underestimated how much that would prevent me from doing my job at Wrigley Field.

Look, the place is old, and with such a packed house and stadium operations staff not used to a reporter on crutches, navigating the stadium was very difficult. It took me nearly a half hour to get from credential pickup to the press box, including a trip in an equipment elevator that was so small I doubt it could have accommodated a wheelchair.

Normally, for an event like this, I’d try to throw my stuff down in the press box as soon as possible and then get pictures from multiple angles throughout the stadium — or go to field level, or at least get to the bleachers and talk to fans. But with elevator access limited and the narrow corridors already crowded, that wasn’t possible. Once I got to my seat, my butt pretty much had to stay there.

Player and coach availability after the matches was also in an area of the stadium that could only be accessed by stairs. That meant I couldn’t physically talk to anybody. USA TODAY’s Nancy Armour, a certified Real One, was so kind as to offer to share the recordings and transcripts with me unprompted (which is how I got DeLeye’s answer in the press conference).

Since I wasn’t able to ask any questions, take any photos or do the full extent of my job, I decided I’d probably do better work back at home. I actually left shortly before the game was officially canceled.

At a more modern stadium, or at least at a stadium built for the sport that was actually happening, I’m sure this wouldn’t have been a problem. But as schools look at other alternative venues for unique events, I hope they also consider ADA compliance. I actually ran into another Nebraska fan on crutches leading into the game. I hope he had a better experience than I did.

The Big Ten confirmed on Sunday that the match won’t be rescheduled at Wrigley Field this season, due to lack of stadium availability. It is unclear whether the game will be restarted on a campus, or perhaps in another neutral setting, like Chicago’s Wintrust Arena.

Hopefully, the suspension of the final game doesn’t take too much shine off the Big Ten/SEC Challenge, a legitimately great event that created many massive non-conference games. All four teams at Wrigley expect to make deep postseason runs this season, and they will have plenty of opportunities to earn high tournament seeds, regardless of anything that happened in Chicago.

The spectacle was worth celebrating. It’s cool to cover a high-level college sporting event and sit in a press box that isn’t 90 percent dudes. It’s cool to see 40,000-plus fans, plus who knows how many sitting in Wrigleyville bars outside, screaming for a college volleyball match. It’s cool to see how much this meant for fans and the athletes, women who deserve unique competitive experiences just as much as football and basketball players do.

But you gotta do it safely, and you gotta do it right.

Via the Lincoln Journal-Star:

After Sunday, I think it’s hard to argue with her. Here’s hoping the next great volleyball event can capture some magic in a safer, more modern, setting.