Big Ten Courts Indianapolis For Hosting Conference Championship Game

Well, it's official: The Big Ten has decided on making Indianapolis' Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Colts, its site for the inaugural conference championship game to be held in December 2011. Keep in mind though, this is not a 'done deal'

The conference office will begin a 30-day period to negotiate a one-year agreement with Indiana Sports Corp and Lucas Oil Stadium to host the game. Once the 2011 agreement is in place, the conference office will conduct a thorough process over the next year to determine the location of the Big Ten Football Championship Game in 2012 and beyond.

Granted, these are just mere formalities the conference needs to go through in order to officially secure the spot. The more pressing issue will be whether to make Lucas Oil Stadium the long-term host of the championship game or to try rotating between other Midwestern football venues such as Chicago's Soldier Field, Green Bay's Lambeau Field, or Detroit's Ford Field.

I can't speak for my LBU colleagues but personally, I prefer they keep it in Indy: It's in a nice, centralized, location relative to most of its conference members (exception of course, being for Nebraska and Penn State), it's successfully hosted the Big Ten's men's and women's basketball tournaments, and most importantly, it's indoors. Please, spare me the talk about playing in "Big Ten Weather:" Most fans if pressed, would likely prefer being in the warm confines of an indoor stadium where they're not freezing their asses off in single digit-to-teen temperatures plus wind chill in early December. Not to mention, the players would probably prefer it as well, given the fact that nobody would be able to blame the weather on a sub-par performance...It's really difficult to see this as anything other than a win-win situation for the fans and the players.

Follow LBU on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to Linebacker-U.com by Email