Illinois High School Football Districting Proposal Rejected

ILLINOIS — High school administrators across Illinois rejected a proposal on Tuesday that would have created districts for football based on geography, but that would have – many schools feared – eliminated longstanding rivalries between local teams.

The proposal would have been determined by the Illinois High School Association based on not only geography but also on a school’s IHSA classification. However, only 272 schools approved the proposal while 379 administrators representing districts across the state rejected the proposal. A total of 79 schools chose not to chime in on the matter, according to the IHSA.

The proposal was only two of 14 measures voted down by IHSA member schools on Tuesday. The other would have cut down on the number of allowable days that high school football coaches are permitted to have contact with their players during the summer.

In all, 89.2 percent of IHSA schools took part in Tuesday’s voting, which represents the largest voting turnout for administrators in more than a decade, IHSA officials said.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson said that the IHSA had already created an ad hoc committee to begin meeting in 2024 in the event that the districting proposal failed. The plan was being pushed by athletic conferences such as the Apollo, Big 12, DuPage Valley and Interstate Eight. However, opponents of the proposal said that the districting plan would have kept schools in competitive Chicago-area leagues like the Chicago Catholic League from maintaining many of its meaningful games, the Sun-Times reported.

Under the plan, schools – once divided into districts – would have played games from within their district from the third week of the season until the ninth and final week of the regular season. Under the plan, the top four teams from each district would have qualified for the IHSA playoffs and teams would have been seeded accordingly.

The plan also called for teams from within the same district not to face one another in the opening round of the playoffs.

“(The ad hoc committee wants) to be proactive in trying to address the issues that are at the root of different football proposals seemingly being brought forth each year,” Anderson said in a statement issued after Tuesday's voting. “They recognize the myriad issues in IHSA football are unique and can be based on geography, school size, conference affiliation, and the traditional success of a program, which is why no recent proposals have garnered enough support to pass.

"There is likely no singular answer to these issues, but the Board wants to explore the idea that a large and diverse group from around the state might be able to find some solutions that the high school football community in the state would support."