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Ranking teams in any sport may be a necessary evil, but, in our opinion, it's at least as evil as it is necessary. They can, after all, create bad feelings, lead to chants of overrated and result in endless (and often pointless) arguments on various message boards.



Now before we get into trouble with everyone who's ever been asked to rank a team, we should mention that we are not (make that absolutely not) questioning the sincerity or effort that goes into this daunting task. It's clearly hard work that's not taken lightly by those who do it, whether it's the WVCA, AVCA or WisSports.Net.



It's just impossible, that's all.



Not only is there too much parity among the strongest teams, there are also too many tweaked ankles, close calls and a thousand other variables in play to be trying to settle things anywhere other than on the court.



Of course, we're also not so foolish as to think rankings are going away anytime soon. With that in mind, we'll throw out what we think might be three positive ways to view rankings.



1. An Opportunity to Uncover Hidden Gems We'll admit it, whenever a new round of rankings comes out, the first thing we look for is where our DD's and/or Dear Son's teams ended up. But once we do that, it's sort of fun to find a team that hadn't been on our radar and learn more about them. For us, a good example would be Merrill, a team that hasn't been to state since 1981. They defeated a tough Tomahawk team last week. They feature a legitimate star in Kayla Duesing. And they wouldn't have been on our radar if we didn't notice their No. 10 ranking in Division 1.  



2. A Way to Promote a Program Especially at the college level, it seems entirely appropriate for programs like UW-Oshkosh, Carthage and UW-Whitewater to create promotional materials that tout their recent top 10 rankings in NCAA Division III. 



3. A Motivational Tool Success in sports is often about finding motivation wherever and whenever you can -- and rankings certainly provide plenty of that for countless teams. If you're ranked highly, the motivation is to prove you belong up there. If not, it's incentive to show everyone you should have been ranked higher.



Fortunately, unlike NCAA Division I football, volleyball does tend to settle things on the court. We did a post over on Cheese & Volleyball more than a year-and-a-half ago that took a tongue-in-cheek look at how the 2007 WIAA Girls Division 1 season might have concluded had it followed the BCS formula. And in 2008, the previously No. 9-ranked Kenosha Tremper moved up eight spots based on their incredible run in the Resch Center.



Here's to settling things on the courts this and every fall.