Summer is almost over because...

 ...the 2023 Western Athletic Conference Volleyball preseason poll was released yesterday as well as the preseason accolades. Those get released roughly a week before the season starts which means the summer doldrums are almost up. WAC and NCAA women's soccer has already started, but seeing as that is one of many teams UT Arlington does not have, volleyball is the Maverick bellwether for the end of summer.

The same disclaimer I put before every preseason poll is coming: the poll plus a dollar will get you four quarters. While volleyball doesn't have the same turnover that football, both genders of basketball and baseball do, there's still new faces, new coaches and in some cases new teams, though the WAC did not add any University this year. All that change gives a bit of uncertainty to the poll. It does set clear expectations for the season and this poll has the UTA squad right around my expectations.

But first the poll:

Basketball Schedule Detective, August 2023 Edition

 I almost put the following news into the comments of the schedule post from last month, but I'm excited about one of the two games I'm going to update for the upcoming UT Arlington men's basketball season, so its own post it gets.

Rocco Miller broke two games this week on his Twitter account. The first is most likely a guarantee game against the New Mexico Lobos on November 16 in Albuquerque. The teams have met four times prior, including three in New Mexico, losing all four.

But the big news is that the UTA Texas State series that I speculated to coming is now known and the series continues. It looks like the rumors I received that Texas State played their half of a home-and-home contract in Fort Worth last year aren't true as College Park Center will host the Bobcats this year and the Mavericks travel to San Marcos next. The game is schedule for November 25.

Summer Chats: Conference Realignment Thoughts

 I haven't addressed wide-scale NCAA conference realignment on The Maverick Rambler, with the exception of how the UT Arlington Athletics Department fits within that framework. I will break that today.

Conference realignment has always been a thing, even if it wasn't called that. Look at the constant shuffling of the Southland Conference from its founding until UTA left in the 2012. The Mavericks had 18 different SLC rivals, but never had more than 11 members at any one time. The pace has accelerated the last two decades, starting with the Atlantic Coast Conference's raid of the Big East. Ever since then there has been a constant rollercoaster of universities trying to better themselves.

Rivalries have been postponed and/or destroyed while teams with no geographic compatibility have replaced the more natural and/or heated ones. Teams are chasing the dollar to increase their competitiveness while negating the fan base. Baylor stopped playing TCU and SMU to replace with Kansas and Iowa State. Until of course TCU was admitted back, along with West Virginia. Guess which game tends to draw more fans, regardless of sport? Now obviously Kansas is a draw in basketball, but now so much in anything else. West Virginia had no natural rivals until Cincinatti was admitted this year. Iowa State's biggest games were out of conference.

But it didn't hit clown world until a year ago.