Chicago State to explore adding football program
Chicago State University is moving toward establishing a Division I football program, forming a university committee to assess the possibility of creating a team.
The school on Thursday announced the committee members at a news conference Thursday. They include former NFL players Howard Griffith, Vaughn Bryant, Tom Thayer and Otis Wilson, along with several Chicago high school football coaches, community leaders and school officials.
The committee should provide a recommendation on the speculative football program’s future this spring, CSU athletic director Monique Carroll said.
“If that is favorable, we could be looking at Chicago’s only Division I program, right here on the South Side,” Carroll said. “We will potentially start football as early as fall 2025.”
The university already has conducted a feasibility study on the prospect of the football program, and the exploratory committee is now the “next step,” Carroll said. The committee also will consider adding new women’s sports teams.
Various questions about the possible football program have yet to be answered. It is unclear how the team would be paid for or where it would play games.
But as football helmets with green Cougar decals sat before school officials, a marching band opened the news conference with brassy tunes and a muscled mascot danced, school leaders were clearly optimistic the program would become a reality.
“I think that the important work of the committee is to look and see what’s the road map, what are the steps that need to happen,” Carroll said. “Is it fall ’24, ’25, ’26? To really come up with actionable items and timetables.”
She also acknowledged the committee could determine that the program should not go forward.
The public university on the Far South Side is Illinois’ only four-year university federally designated as predominantly Black. The school has at times struggled with high-profile lawsuits and low enrollment in the last decade, including enrolling just 86 freshmen in fall 2016. But freshmen and sophomore enrollment has grown sharply over the last year, Chicago State President Zaldwaynaka “Z” Scott said.
Overall enrollment decreased 2.1% in 2022, with 2,296 students enrolled in the fall, according to a university news release.