Nebraska, Penn State, Florida, SMU to play volleyball exhibition with $1 million in NIL prizes

Four premier women’s college volleyball programs will compete on Aug. 27 at AT&T Stadium in a nationally televised exhibition with a $1 million prize purse, the largest ever in women’s college sports.

Nebraska, Penn State, Florida and SMU are set to headline the first-of-its-kind, three-hour primetime event, named Spikes Under the Lights. Two semifinal matches and a championship will be played in a best-of-three-set format at the 100,000-seat home of the Dallas Cowboys. Standard college matches are contested as best of five. Results will not count toward the teams’ regular-season records.

Of the prize purse, $800,000 is to be split among the four programs, with an additional $200,000 paid to the championship participants. The schools will distribute the money to their athletes as NIL payments.

The Thursday night event comes three days after the conclusion of the season-opening AVCA First Serve, which this year includes 10 teams in Milwaukee, including SMU.

Nebraska and Penn State, the two Big Ten participants in Spikes Under the Lights, have combined to win 12 national championships. Penn State won the most recent of its seven titles in 2024. It returns two-time All-American opposite hitter Kennedy Martin, who began her career at Florida.

Nebraska last won a championship in 2017 and has finished as runner-up three times since. The Huskers, consistently a top TV and attendance draw, return All-Americans Bergen Reilly at setter, outside hitter Harper Murray and middle blocker Andi Jackson. They have combined to earn eight All-America awards and each received first-team recognition last year as Nebraska finished 33-1.

Florida has won 16 SEC titles in the past 25 years. SMU enjoyed two of its most successful seasons in 2024 and 2025 under coach Sam Erger, who is entering her fourth year.

Last year, Nebraska and Creighton set an indoor attendance record for a regular-season match with 17,675. Nebraska played a match in 2023 at Memorial Stadium in front of 92,003, an all-time record for a women’s sporting event.

Broadcast details will be revealed later. The event will be run by GSE Worldwide, a New York-based management agency, and Full Day Productions.

Nebraska and Penn State are also scheduled to play on Sept. 6 in an outdoor event at Wrigley Field that includes Missouri and Kentucky.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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