It is expected to have much more than a trickle-down effect. Tuesday’s announcement by the Big West Conference that it will sponsor men’s volleyball beginning in 2018 creates a waterfall of opportunities, perhaps the biggest being that the west region now will be guaranteed two automatic berths in the NCAA tournament.

“There’s a lot of positive things for the West Coast teams,” Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said. “One hope is that other Big West schools will add the sport.

“What’s huge is that there now is a full-fledged league in the eyes of the NCAA with representation.”

Although the NCAA has sponsored the sport since 1970, the four leagues fielding teams are not recognized by the NCAA but instead are hybrid conferences: the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association and Conference Carolinas. The Big West becomes the first Division I conference to sponsor men’s volleyball, making it its 18th championship sport.

Hawaii will move to the Big West with current MPSF members Cal State Northridge, Long Beach State, UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara, as well as new affiliate member UC San Diego, a Division II school. Remaining in the MPSF will be Brigham Young, Cal Baptist, Pepperdine, Stanford, UCLA and USC. A minimum of six teams is required for postseason NCAA automatic qualification.

The national championship tournament expanded from four to six teams in 2014, with four automatic and two at-large berths. The addition of a fifth conference likely means an expansion to eight teams with five automatic and three at-large berths.

The Big West regular season will consist of a double round-robin format for a total of 10 matches. A six-team, single-elimination tournament will be hosted at a campus site a week prior to the NCAA championship selection.

Hawaii will benefit from the split with the MPSF when it comes to filling the annual Outrigger Resorts Invitational field. When the decision was made to drop another MPSF team from the preseason event in favor of boosting the RPI with a Conference Carolinas representative, teams such as Penn State (EIVA) and Ohio State (MIVA) said they’d no longer participate unless there was a second MPSF team.

“Now we can bring back those (EIVA and MIVA) teams and include an MPSF team,” said Wade, an ad hoc member of the NCAA men’s volleyball committee. “With just 10 league matches, we’ll be able to have more nonconference matches. some with the MPSF teams.”

The Big West is the first conference to sponsor men’s and women’s indoor and women’s beach volleyball. While all nine schools sponsor women’s indoor, only five have men’s programs and just four currently offer beach (Hawaii, Long Beach State, Cal Poly and CSUN).

Several schools have discussed adding beach and/or men’s volleyball. One of those is Cal State Fullerton, where Jim Donovan is athletic director.

“Maybe someday,” Donovan, the former Hawaii athletic director, said in a phone call from Fullerton. “But we’re still in the process of getting all of our (15) sports we have now fully funded. All of our sports are down at least one scholarship, and we had to cut wrestling and women’s gymnastics four years ago.

“Hopefully, we can be fully funded by July 2017 or 2018. Those two (volleyball) sports would be attractive given the talent and interest in our area, but we don’t have the resources right now.”