Chicago State Football is about to become even more real

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

I feel like I’ve been writing about the possibility of Chicago State football almost as long as I’ve been writing Extra Points. Back in 2021, I wrote that I didn’t think the school was being irrational for seriously considering the idea. In 2023, after the school announced a new exploratory committee to study starting a team, I dug into some of the more concrete next steps the school needed to figure out.

Some of those have now been addressed. Chicago State has an actual conference home now, (the NEC), and they’ve added other sports to make sure the department remains in compliance with Title IX as they prepare for a football team.

And this week, they took another big step.

On Tuesday, the school announced they have formally begun their search for the program’s first head football coach. The university has partnered with Renaissance Search & Consulting for the search, so if you’re looking to apply, you should head here.

But how do you hire a coach when there’s no, well, anything of a program yet? Who are they looking for? And shoot, where on earth is this team going to play?

I caught up with Chicago State athletic director Dr. Monique Carroll to try to get some answers.

Who is Chicago State looking to hire for this gig?

The perfect candidate, Carroll admitted to me, is probably something of a “unicorn.”

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