2024 football schedule release: What looks different for the new season?

At the time, West Aurora’s decision to leave the Southwest Prairie Conference and rejoin the Upstate Eight Conference felt like a relatively small move.

But ultimately it led to a number of other moves which reshaped several conferences around Chicagoland.

West Aurora left the Upstate Eight after the 2018 season, which ultimately led to that conference reducing its reach to 12 teams to 10 and ended up leading to the formation of the DuKane Conference.

West Aurora’s decision to return to its former home was part of a larger move by the Upstate Eight to expand to 14 teams with two seven-team divisions. Riverside-Brookfield, which played last season as an independent filling most of its schedule with teams from the seven-team Southland Conference, has also joined the reformed league along with two now former members of the Chicagoland Prairie: Elmwood Park and Ridgewood.

The Southwest Prairie Conference went looking to fill that vacancy to retain its 12-team, two-division format and added Bolingbrook from the SouthWest Suburban Conference.

That caused another ripple. Bolingbrook’s defection left the SWSC with nine teams and broke apart the continuity of a its two division of five teams each format.

The SWSC’s response was to form a football-only merger with the DuPage Valley’s six existing teams to form a 15-team conference, the Southwest Valley, where its 15 teams are divided in three divisions (Blue/Green/Red) based on a success/enrollment factor that divided them.

The CCL/ESCC also restructured itself, with many substantial moves, most notably St. Ignatius’ addition to the Blue Division in place of Marist.

And after collaborating as a joint conference for the past two seasons, the Interstate Eight and Kishwaukee River leagues have one again broken back into sole entities. Six teams remain in the I-8 while the Kishwaukee has eight.

Independent of all of those moves was yet another round of changes to the Chicago Public League’s structure.

16 of the CPL’s more consistently successful programs remain in the Red Division, broken up into four divisions of four teams each. All Red Division teams are eligible for the playoffs.

The change comes in the second level of CPL teams, that are designated as White Division. Last season, there were five white divisions. Four of those divisions were restricted to the top four finishers being eligible for playoff qualification, and the fifth was restricted to just the top two finishers.

This season there are six white divisions, divided into two tiers. There are two White Tier 1 Conferences where all seven teams in the division are eligible to make the state playoffs provided they meet the other requirements. The other four conferences, White Tier 2, will only send its conference champion to the playoffs.

What does this all mean?

Last season’s format produced 26 playoff qualifiers from the CPL. It’s almost mathematically impossible for the conference to produce that many in this format. It seems more likely that 18-20 bids should come from the CPL, possibly less, but certainly not more.

So while the number of overall playoff eligible schools didn’t see that much of a decline, dropping from 501 to 495, the likelihood that we will need more 4-5 teams to fill the playoff field this year seems almost certain to increase.

Last year’s field needed six at-large teams with four regular season wins to fill the field. Based on these changes it seems almost certain that at least that many will be needed once again in 2024.

Chicagoland wasn’t the only area to see some league changes.

In Central Illinois, the Heart of Illinois and Central Illinois conferences have merged forming a 16-team league that has divided into a pair of 8-team divisions.

Quincy Notre Dame has also been added to the Central State Eight, which allowed the league to expand to 12 and break into a pair of 6-team divisions.

That move along with the Upstate Eight’s expansion means that there are now just seven conferences in the state of Illinois that are “closed” conferences that play no non-conference games: Big Northern, Northern Illinois 10, Black Diamond, Fox Valley, Sangamo, South Central and the Vermilion Valley.

One conference’s fate appears to be still in limbo. The Chicagoland Prairie contested last year with eight members, but two of them left for the revamped Upstate Eight while Westmont has appeared to have returned to the ranks of Independent schools, although they are the lone school in the state that still has three vacancies on its nine-game schedule (seven other schools have one).

There are 10 schools in Illinois that are without a conference, down from 12 a year ago. Riverside-Brookfield (Upstate Eight) and Quincy Notre Dame (Central State Eight) joined leagues, while Oblong-Palestine-Hutsonville is now in the ranks of 8-man football. Westmont is the state’s lone new independent squad.