What John Cook said at Big Ten volleyball media days

Big Ten is stepping it up. This is awesome to have this. It’s exciting to be here. Makes you feel special to be a volleyball coach and a part of this conference. I got to meet the new commissioner.

Anyway, just thank you to the Big Ten for having all this and how we’re treated here, you feel like rock stars. I think these athletes deserve it. It’s been a long time coming. But this is really, really cool.

Well, I’m not playing. But a couple weeks ago I wanted to get a feel of what it’s going to feel like, so I went to Folsom Field — Dead & Company, you ever heard of them? I went to their concert, and the stadium is completely sold out, the field is sold out, so you can’t even move.

I just remember — and they start at 6:30 at night. Most concerts start late, and they start at 6:30, and we’re starting at 7:00, so I thought this will be perfect. Just to get the feeling. My adrenaline and goosebumps were going through the roof. I’m just thinking of trying to take that, what it’s going to be like playing a volleyball match in Memorial Stadium where they’re actually cheering for our team.

It’s really hard to imagine for a volleyball match. We’re going to have to do some breathing exercises before we go out.

Not of this magnitude. I remember what year it was — maybe ’94, ’95, we were playing Penn State. They were No. 1 undefeated at the time.

I told our administration, guys, we’re going to pack the Field House. They had two people taking tickets, and of course we actually beat Penn State, great match. I think there was 8,000 in there.

But a lot of people were disappointed because they did not want to wait in line that long or got turned away. That was the first glimpse of you create something really big and special, people will come and see it.

I think the competition between Nebraska and Wisconsin and whoever else wants to try to hold these attendance records, this is great for volleyball. It’s what makes the world go around, and people love that. That’s why they tune into ESPN and Big Ten and follow sports.

We’re trying to take it so we can keep it and we don’t have to go back and forth with anybody.

Well, I don’t think Camp Randall is going to seat 90,000. I don’t know. I think we’re going to be on a world record here.

Again, I didn’t think any of this was going to happen. I was thinking if we could get 20,000 we’d be happy. President Carter and our AD, Trev Alberts, they believed we would sell out Memorial Stadium because it’s been sold out in every event there since the ’60s.

I don’t remember the exact year. But it’s been sold out. President Carter said we sold out every time since whatever year in 1960s, and we’re going to sell it out for this, and he was right.

Yeah, I just was up in the Big Ten studio, and Rick made an interesting comment to me, he thinks volleyball is the most fun spectator sport to watch now because it’s so fast, it’s happening so fast, the games go by and there’s always action and you’ve got these great athletes playing a very highly skilled game. I think he’s right.

You just see the ratings keep going and the talent level gets better and better. There’s so many great teams all across the country now. People are into it.

I see it at the younger ages at the club tournaments. I was just in Chicago last month, and there’s 104 courts going on in the convention center. 104 courts going, 8:00 to 2:00 wave and a 2:00 to 9:00 at night wave. Think how many kids are playing.

Volleyball is booming now, and it’s going to be interesting because I know we’re going to play Sunday night at 6:30 a couple Sundays, and it’s going to be interesting.

But could be a really cool TV time.

Well, Bobby Knight said it way back, winning the Big Ten is harder than winning a National Championship, and I’ve said that many times, as well. It’s ten weeks against great competition, home and away.

Now that the conference is getting bigger — you used to play everybody, but now you don’t play everybody twice. It’s a great accomplishment to win the Big Ten. It’s really, really hard to do.

Hats off to Wisconsin. They won it the last three years. They’ve done a tremendous job, and everybody is chasing them right now.

You know, the portal is great, and it provides, I guess, opportunities. I think there’s some negatives to it, as well. It bothers me when a team — when somebody transfers within the conference.

I feel like you train those — you invest all that time and energy and then they turn around and go to another team and you’re going to play against them, potentially twice.

As an old-school coach, that part bothers me. I don’t like it.

I tell our players two things. There’s two things you remember in this whole press conference day. You can write these down; they’re simple: One, volleyball doesn’t know how old you are. So the game does not know how old you are. The second thing is if a dog is going to bite, it’s going to bite as a pup. These guys need to be ready to come out and get after it.

I think they have the mindset — get this, Maggie Mendelson is the youngest player on our team, and she’s already been here a year. It’s nuts. We’re going to be young and aggressive, and these guys are going to be fearless, and it’s going to be fun to watch.