INDIANAPOLIS — Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts, will host the Big Ten Conference's first football championship game in 2011.
No date has been set for the title game of the 12-team conference that will include Nebraska next season for the first time. The Huskers are moving from the Big 12, where the league has had a championship game since 1996.
Lucas Oil Stadium, which opened in August 2008, seats 63,000 for Colts games but is expected to be expanded to 70,000 seats when it plays host to Super Bowl XLVI in 2012. The downtown domed stadium has FieldTurf, which is the same surface at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln.
The Big Ten will begin a 30-day period to negotiate a one-year agreement with Indiana Sports Corp. and Lucas Oil Stadium. Once the 2011 agreement is in place, a process will be conducted during the next year to determine the title game location in 2012 and beyond, the league said Thursday.
“We felt at this time it was important to identify a site for the first championship game and then spend more time with other cities and venues with respect to both our basketball tournaments and the football championship games in the future,'' Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said, according to a written statement.
“The city of Indianapolis has been an outstanding host for our basketball tournaments, and we look forward to holding our first Big Ten football championship game in Lucas Oil Stadium.”
The Big Ten has played its conference basketball tournaments at Conseco Fieldhouse in downtown Indianapolis.
Lucas Oil Stadium was the site for last April's NCAA men's Final Four basketball tournament, and it will host the 2015 men's Final Four.
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