Champaign’s Memorial Stadium is set to host eight 2022 IHSA football state championship games in late November.
But the end-of-season showcase might be finding a new home once the last of those contests goes final.
The IHSA has opened bids for a five-year block of state football tournament hosting duties, scheduled to cover the 2023 through 2027 tournaments.
Bid specifications are posted on the organization’s website. The deadline for bids is Sept. 2, with an IHSA Board of Directors decision on the topic slated for December of this year.
Among the IHSA’s list of proposal specifications are the host venue having at least 12,000 seats and artificial turf, along with numerous other requirements.
Champaign has been at least a partial tournament host since 1999, serving as the IHSA’s lone state football destination between that year and 2012. Northern Illinois in DeKalb and the University of Illinois have rotated hosting responsibilities since 2013 on an every-other-year basis. Huskie Stadium fielded the most recent state series, in November 2021.
Other past tournament hosts since the introduction of state football games in 1974 are Illinois State and Northwestern. Normal hosted nearly all of the state contests between 1974 and 1998, with Evanston garnering the Class 5A and 6A games between 1981 and 1984.
Colin Likas is the preps coordinator at The News-Gazette. He can be reached at clikas@news-gazette.com, or on Twitter at @clikasNG.