Big Ten growth forces IHSA football finals to move

Blame it on Nebraska.

The Big Ten's decision to expand to 12 teams next fall means the IHSA Football State Finals will no longer be hosted in Champaign every Thanksgiving weekend.

But the finals won't be leaving Memorial Stadium for good, just every other year.

With Nebraska joining the Big Ten and creating a 12-team league, the University of Illinois will play a home game on Thanksgiving weekend beginning in 2013 and every other year. The Illini Thanksgiving weekend schedule, however, will rotate from home to away annually, allowing the IHSA to continue to play at Memorial Stadium in even years.

That means the search is on for a site to host the state finals in 2013, 2015 and other odd years.

“We are certainly disappointed, but very understanding,” IHSA Executive Director Marty Hickman said in a statement released Thursday morning. “The University of Illinois has given us a world-class facility in Memorial Stadium to contest our state finals and the entire Champaign-Urbana community has offered a first-class atmosphere for the competing schools and fans. We look forward to returning the IHSA Football State Finals to Memorial Stadium every other year and will begin to investigate other potential sites to host the finals in the years that the University of Illinois is unable to host.”

The University of Illinois has hosted the state finals every year since 1999, when the championship games were moved from Hancock Stadium at Illinois State University. The inaugural IHSA football state title games were played at Hancock Stadium in Normal in 1974, and the contests were played there every year until 1999, when a conflict with a home Illinois State football playoff game led the IHSA to move the contests to Champaign.

The hosting contract with Illinois State expired after the 1999 title games and the University of Illinois was awarded the future hosting duties later that school year. The lone exception was during a four-year stretch from 1981 to 1984, when the Class 1A-4A games were played at Hancock Stadium and the 5A and 6A contests unfolded at Northwestern University's Dyche Stadium (currently Ryan Field) in Evanston.