Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium to continue to host Big Ten title game through 2028
The Big Ten title game will remain at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana through 2028, per an announcement from Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti during Tuesday’s first day of Big Ten media days.
Despite the Big Ten’s recent 18-team expansion and new West Coast members, Indianapolis retains its claim over the conference title game. 2024 marked the final year of the Big Ten’s contract with the venue before Pettiti confirmed the blueprint through 2028.
Lucas Oil Stadium has hosted the Big Ten title game since 2011. While the previous ten contests have included the victors of the East and West Divisions, 2024 will mark the first season where the conference’s championship match features teams with the two best overall marks from regular season play.
Since its inception 13 years ago, Wisconsin and Ohio State boast the most appearances at six each. The Buckeyes have won in five of those instances, a record for the Big Ten title game era.
Big Ten title game will remain at Indianapolis' Lucas Oil Stadium thru 2028
With four West Coast squads — USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon, joining the Big Ten this fall, the title game’s location could certainly change down the line. Indianapolis’ connection to the conference’s biggest game of the season, though, will keep the title bout in the Midwest until 2028.
Notre Dame’s [autotag]Chris Guiliano[/autotag] always will remember the 2024 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Largely overlooked going into the 100-meter freestyle, the reigning ACC Swimmer of the Year surprised everyone by dominating the event. It culminated with a win in the final with a time of 47.38 seconds. Here’s the final in its entirety:
This victory qualifies Guiliano for his first spot on the U.S. team for the Paris Olympics. The U.S. has won gold in this event in two of the past three Olympics. Caeleb Dressel took the gold in Tokyo, but his third-place finish in Giuliano’s triumph means he won’t get a chance to defend that medal.
Guiliano also qualified for the 4×100 relay team simply by finishing in the top four. His teammates will consist of Dressel, Jack Alexy and Hunter Armstrong.
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USA Swimming replaced the Indianapolis Colts’ home turf with three temporary pools for Olympic trials.
Ryan Murphy spends a lot of time looking up at the ceiling. More than the average swimmer, but it’s what backstrokers do. They try to swim straight, count their strokes and note the flags, signaling the wall is coming up fast.
So when he learned U.S. Olympic swimming trials for the 2024 Paris Games would be at Lucas Oil Stadium from June 15-23, he wondered what he’d be looking at. And if the giant windows above each end zone at the Indianapolis Colts’ venue could impact swimmers.
“Being in an NFL stadium is going to be wild for us because it’s just a very far way to look,” the two-time Olympian told For The Win.
“I asked if the sun sets on the same side of the stadium where the pool is going to be, and I think they said that it sets on the opposite side.”
It’s a valid concern, considering this is the first time trials have been at a football stadium after a basketball arena in Omaha hosted the last four. And while USA Swimming is well-versed in building temporary pools, Lucas Oil Stadium offers the chance for more of everything — more space and amenities for athletes, more fans, more pizzazz to match the stakes of the meet.
At one time, trials at a big venue like CHI Health Center Omaha was considered groundbreaking for the sport. But with tickets selling quickly, trials had simply outgrown the building, USA Swimming chief commercial officer Shana Ferguson said.
Now for a couple weeks, Lucas Oil Stadium is the nation’s largest natatorium, simultaneously providing an intimate atmosphere in a significantly larger venue.
Yet more space for trials also comes with more challenges, both logistically and in ensuring pool conditions are technically flawless in a controlled environment, including blacking out the windows (and assuaging Murphy’s concerns).
How do you fit an Olympic Trials pool inside an NFL Stadium?
USA Swimming built three pools: a standardized 10-lane, 50-meter competition pool and two connected warmup pools — another 10-lane, 50-meter one and a seven-lane, 25-meter one.
The overall cost of trials is split between USA Swimming and Indiana Sports Corp, with Ferguson saying it’s “deep into seven figures” and Patrick Talty, president of Indiana Sports Corp, noting sponsorship and ticket sales help offset the price tag. However, both declined to provide a specific number.
Beginning of pool construction at Lucas Oil Stadium for 2024 U.S. Olympic swimming trials (Photo courtesy of USA Swimming)
The competition pool is on the stadium’s south side with a huge curtain hanging around the 50-yard line, separating the competition pool from the warmup ones. About 20 rows of seats on the north side are on wheels and were relocated to the south side to make the competition pool more of a round arena instead of a horseshoe, Ferguson said.
Organizers are expecting to hit the 30,000 capacity Saturday for the first day of trials, which would break the attendance world record for an indoor swim meet. The current mark, according to USA Swimming, is 25,000 from the 1936 Olympics. Even hoping for 20,000 fans each night is a huge difference compared with Omaha’s approximate sellable capacity at about 9,700, Ferguson said.
A bigger venue also opened the possibilities for more athlete amenities. In addition to more space to warm up and stretch, swimmers will have access to more massage tables and therapists and serenity suites for quiet relaxation. Coaches will have a designated wellness area too. There’s also room for more food options, including smoothie and coffee bars, along with space for a video game area, table tennis and cornhole.
Lucas Oil Stadium warmup pools for 2024 U.S. Olympic swimming trials (Photo courtesy of USA Swimming)
Perhaps most importantly — what Ferguson described as “the most popular amenity” at the 2016 trials — is space for swimmers to play with more therapy dogs, who were absent in 2021 because of COVID-19.
“We knew that that was the right package to elevate swimming and to [put] it on a grander stage,” Talty said, adding that the stadium was built to be flexible beyond Colts games. “To take it from a supercharged swim meet to really an event that people look forward to coming to every four years and really making it a big deal.”
How to build an Olympic pool from scratch inside Lucas Oil Stadium
What Lucas Oil Stadium was not built for is a plumbing and irrigation system that can handle 1.8 million gallons of water. But that’s necessary for three pools, and USA Swimming — along with its longtime contractors, including Myrtha Pools — knows how to build it.
Beginning of pool construction at Lucas Oil Stadium for 2024 U.S. Olympic swimming trials (Photo courtesy of USA Swimming)
“It’s essentially a very intricate above-ground pool” masquerading as an in-ground one with a plumbing system resembling “a grown up Erector Set,” Ferguson said.
You’d never know because 78,000 square feet of decking are built nearly 10 feet above the turf-less concrete ground, swallowing up eight rows of seats and concealing the two gigantic holding tanks for water filtration.
Throughout four weeks, nearly 200 workers built the pools. Hidden below deck are 5,000 linear feet of PVC piping creating a closed filtration loop with pumps capable of moving more than 8,500 gallons per minute, according to USA Swimming.
“I’ve talked to plenty of people about Olympic trials, and they’re all shocked that we could put a swimming pool inside of an NFL stadium,” Murphy said. “I don’t think many people are aware that you can build a pool above ground and just have all the piping on the floor and then build a temporary deck to make it look totally seamless.”
Water from the nearby White River was delivered to the stadium via fire hydrants and hoses with an assist from the Indianapolis Fire Department. It was treated before flowing through the hydrants and snaking its way into the building from the 100-level concourse down to the pool, where it was treated again with chlorine and other chemicals, Ferguson said.
Workers install the pool liner at Lucas Oil Stadium for 2024 U.S. Olympic swimming trials (Photo courtesy of USA Swimming)
“It’s an interesting science experiment of keeping the same 1.8 million gallons of water in this building, and it’s just recirculated, re-cleaned, re-filtered, re-chlorinated and reused the entire time,” Ferguson said.
But getting that water out is “a little bit of a physics problem,” she added, because organizers can’t simply drain it. So they have to reverse pump the water up and out again through the concourse.
“It’s an engineering feat,” Ferguson said. “We will remove all the impurities before we pump it out. So we’re removing the chlorine, removing body fluids and so forth in order to put it back into the White River cleaner, actually, then when we got it we got it.”
The competition pool being filled at Lucas Oil Stadium for 2024 U.S. Olympic swimming trials (Photo courtesy of USA Swimming)
Once the water is out and deconstruction begins, the competition pool will go to Fort Wayne, Indiana, while the two warmup pools are off to the Cayman Islands.
As for the football turf, it worked out for all parties that the Colts were already replacing it ahead of the 2024 season, so USA Swimming is off the hook for replacing it.
Will the atmosphere be like a Sunday Colts game for swimmers?
No one really knows what the vibes at trials will be like until Saturday, but organizers caught a glimpse of what’s possible during a test meet with Indiana high school swimmers last weekend, Ferguson said.
It was a practice run for all aspects of operations, from the timing system to officials and volunteers to the pool itself. After what she said was a smooth test, final additions are being made this week, like installing underwater cameras.
Lucas Oil Stadium for 2024 U.S. Olympic swimming trials (Photo courtesy of USA Swimming)
Similar to standardized lighting, other trials conditions need to be regulated. So the water temperature will be set to about 78-79 degrees, while the deck temperature will be a little cooler, Ferguson said. Cold and deep water makes a pool faster, and an advantage of building a pool from scratch is ensuring the whole thing is just shy of three meters deep.
“They build pools from scratch for a lot of meets, and I think it’s really cool because you can just put it wherever you want,” two-time Olympian Abbey Weitzeil said. “They can just build a pool in any arena which is super cool [and] allows for the grandstand seating.”
With the pool deck covering some rows of seats, spectators will feel like they’re much closer to the action, allowing for an intimate feel despite the size of Lucas Oil Stadium, Talty said.
Lucas Oil Stadium for 2024 U.S. Olympic swimming trials (Photo courtesy of USA Swimming)
The four-sided center-hung scoreboard — 20 times the size of the one at 2021 trials — will create basketball vibes, and for the evening events, swimmers will walk out on deck underneath a 50-foot video board displaying each of them in pre-recorded videos.
Between the “blocks walk” entrances and orchestrated lighting effects, it’ll feel like a prize fight. Or, for swimming devotees, it’s the distant American cousin of the short-lived International Swimming League.
“The grandeur of that stage, being in an NFL stadium is going to be unbelievable,” said Murphy, a Florida native and huge Jacksonville Jaguars fan. “Last year, the Jaguars won both games against the Colts, including the one in the Colts stadium. So I’m hoping that’s some good luck for me.”
The Kansas City #Chiefs showed fans the funniest faces made by their players during the 40 yard dash at past combines.
The Kansas City Chiefs have been extremely successful at identifying young talent in the draft in recent seasons.
From stars like L’Jarius Sneed, Trent McDuffie, George Karlaftis, and Rashee Rice, Kansas City seems to have a knack for finding the best players available.
The Chiefs have been eyeing the available pool of players in Indianapolis, Indiana this week as they get a feel for the 2024 draft class, but the team made sure fans on social media didn’t forget some of the top combine moments from years past.
In a post to Twitter, Kansas City recapped some of the funniest faces made by its players during workouts at Lucas Oil Stadium:
The goofy visages of the Chiefs’ players served as a way to tease the defending Super Bowl champions as the offseason gets into full swing and kept fans engaged in the hype building in Indianapolis as Kansas City prepares for the 2024 NFL Draft.
A recent report states that the Big Ten Championship Game may have a second site in the near future.
A recent report states that the Big Ten Championship Game may have a second site in the near future. The Las Vegan Review-Journal has reported that the Big Ten and Las Vegas officials are in early discussions about the city hosting the league’s title game.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Steve Hill told the outlet that talks are currently in the very early stages.
“The Big Ten has asked us to submit proposals. I’m sure they have asked a number of cities. We are certainly interested, will put our best foot forward and know there is no better place for their football championship.”
If the game was to be played in Vegas, it would take place at Allegiant Stadium home of the Raiders. The stadium is currently scheduled to host Super Bowl LVIII in February of 2024.
The conference title game has been played in Indianapolis since its creation in 2011. The contract with Lucas Oil Stadium is expected to expire after the 2024 edition of the game.
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The Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts are holding joint practices ahead of their preseason tilt this August and the dates and times are now official.
On Tuesday, The Bears and Colts both announced the joint practices will take place August 16 and 17 at the Grand Sports Complex in Westfield, IN, just north of Indianapolis. Each practice begins at 6:00 ET and fans are allowed free entry with a ticket that can be obtained at Colts.com/Camp. The practices take place a few days prior to the preseason game at Lucas Oil Stadium on August 19.
This will be the second time in three years that the Bears hold joint training camp practices with another organization. They last did so in 2021 when they welcomed the Miami Dolphins to Halas Hall ahead of a preseason game at Soldier Field.
The Bears will report to Halas Hall on July 25 with the first practice taking place July 26. The first practice open to fans takes place on July 27.
Here are a few linebackers expected to test well at the NFL Scouting Combine that the Los Angeles Chargers could target in the draft.
The NFL Scouting Combine kicks off this week, which will bring the 2023 draft class fully into focus, as this is the week of athletic testing, evaluations, and interviews for over 300 prospects.
With the combine ready to set the stage before free agency and the draft, we look at players worth monitoring for the Chargers.
Whether it be players who are options at pick No. 21 or later in the draft, we will pick out some at each position who should test well and generate buzz.
Here are a few linebackers worth keeping an eye on.
It should be noted that the combine has a slightly outdated view of the positions. The prime example includes the edge rushers. There is no edge rusher designation. Some of the participants may be listed as a linebacker despite rushing the passer for the majority of their careers.
There also is no distinction between an interior defensive lineman and an edge rusher. The same goes on the offensive side of the ball where there’s no distinction between interior offensive linemen and offensive tackles.
Meanwhile, both safeties and cornerbacks are combined into one position of defensive backs.
Breaking it down by position, here’s the full list of prospects who received an invite:
For the 11th time in program history Notre Dame is officially taking a home game to a road location as the [autotag]Shamrock Series[/autotag] is set to take place this Saturday night in Las Vegas as the Irish play “host” to BYU. As you’re likely aware, Notre Dame has done extremely well all-time in these games going 10-0 to date with really only a couple even being competitive.
Saturday will feature a game against one of the better opponents Notre Dame will have played in this series however with the 3-1 Cougars.
Notre Dame has worn alternate uniforms for the game on nine occasions, a tradition that wasn’t a part of things when the series began back in 2009. Here is a quick look back at Notre Dame’s all-time showings in the Shamrock Series.
Houston Texans general manager Nick Caserio would like for the NFL Scouting Combine to stay in the city of Indianapolis.
The NFL moves around the Super Bowl, the NFL draft, and especially owners meetings.
Why should the NFL Scouting Combine be off limits?
The NFL is bandying about the concept of moving the combine to another city for 2023, although no presentations have been made at this point.
Houston Texans general manager Nick Caserio told Texans Radio’s Marc Vandermeer and John Harris on March 1 that he would like to see the combine stay in the Hoosier State’s capital, indicating the the “consistency that we’re all accustomed to” from being in Indianapolis would be lost if the combine moved.
“Indianapolis is a great host,” said Caserio. “The way it’s setup between the convention center, between the dome, the access to the medical facility and the hotel locations. I mean, everything is sort of centrally located. Logistically it’s very easy to kind of move around. I think [president and director of the National Invitational Camp] Jeff Foster has done a phenomenal job here through the years. Have a lot of respect for what he’s done in kind of developing and evolving.”
COVID-19 taught the NFL and its 32 clubs how to adjust on the fly, and Caserio says the Texans would similarly make adjustments if the NFL moved the combine.
“I’d say personally would love to see it continue in Indianapolis because I think there is a lot of benefit to being here,” Caserio said.
