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CHICAGO—If you’re a Chicagoan looking for new football options now that the Bears are threatening to move to Indiana, you don’t have a ton of options.

The three largest Division I universities in the city (DePaul, Loyola and UIC) do not have football programs. Neither does the Illinois Institute of Technology, Northeastern Illinois or many of the other prominent institutions in the city. That means you’ve either got to drive up to see Northwestern (which, thanks to Ryan Field construction, is only offering artisanal, small-batch college football at the moment), hit the suburbs or check out a Division III game at North Park or the University of Chicago.

Until next year. On Thursday, Chicago State University announced that its board has finally officially given the green light to move forward with D-I football. The Cougars are scheduled to compete as an “FCS Independent” in 2026 and then move to join their peers in the Northeast Conference for the 2027 season.

Chicago State hired a head football coach, Bobby Rome II, in April. But as of this second, the school doesn’t have any other football coaches — or any athletes officially on the roster, or a formalized schedule or a stadium.

That … is not how “expansion teams” have typically operated in college football. When I went down to spend time at UTRGV earlier this year for its first game, school officials told me how their hiring and infrastructure-building started in 2019. They hired their first coach in 2022.

Chicago State athletic director Monique Carroll acknowledged to me that the school’s timeline is “very aggressive.” But there’s a method to the madness, and she’s confident everybody else will start to see what the program has in mind.

Take the 2026 schedule. The school did confirm that its first football game is scheduled for Aug. 29. Carroll also told me the school is targeting 11 games for 2026, with at least four at home, and that the schedule is functionally complete, even though the ink hasn’t dried on every game contract yet.

The school plans to announce the full schedule on Feb. 4. But I did get a hint about who might be on it … and where.

Quick reminder: We are switching to a holiday schedule starting next week. We’ll publish on Dec 22 and 29 before returning to a regular schedule on Jan. 5.