Southern Utah adds first-year Chicago State to 2026 finale

Southern Utah’s late-season add is bigger than a date on the schedule. When the Thunderbirds line up against Chicago State on Saturday, Nov. 21 at Eccles Coliseum in Cedar City, Utah, it will be the regular-season finale for both programs and a clean snapshot of where the FCS is headed: more transition, more movement and more schools building schedules from scratch.

Chicago State is set to play its first football season in 2026, and Southern Utah will be part of that opening-year path. The Cougars will operate as an FCS Independent in their debut season before joining the Northeast Conference in 2027, an unusual two-step entry that leaves them piecing together a national schedule while the program is still taking shape. Chicago State says it is the only NCAA Division I FCS football program in the city of Chicago, a notable footprint for a school that had its football plan unanimously approved by the board of trustees on Dec. 18, 2025.

That makes the November trip to Cedar City more than a simple cross-country matchup. It is one more benchmark for a program that will open Aug. 29 against Roosevelt at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, Illinois, a 20,000-seat venue that will serve as the Cougars’ home base while the roster and schedule are built. Chicago State’s 2026 slate also includes Kentucky Christian, UT Martin, Butler, Tarleton State, North Carolina A&T, Lindenwood, Norfolk State and Virginia-Lynchburg, with a later update on its schedule page moving the Virginia-Lynchburg game to Nov. 14, a reminder of how fluid inaugural-year scheduling can be.

Bobby Rome II is guiding that build. Chicago State hired him on April 8, 2025, and he arrives with head-coaching experience from Florida Memorial, where he coached from 2022 through 2024 and helped steer the program from zero conference wins to back-to-back Sun Conference championship-game appearances in 2023 and 2024. For a first-year FCS program, that kind of résumé matters. It gives the Cougars a head coach who has already handled a startup climb.

Southern Utah, meanwhile, is making its own reset. The Thunderbirds are set to rejoin the Big Sky Conference on July 1, 2026, returning to a league where they won football titles in 2015 and 2017. The Big Sky has said its 2026 football schedule will feature 58 total games and nine conference games annually after adding Southern Utah and Utah Tech. SUU’s slate includes five home games at Eccles Coliseum and opens at Montana on Aug. 29 before running through a Big Sky-heavy line of opponents that includes Weber State, Colorado State, St. Thomas, Idaho State, Utah Tech, UC Davis, Idaho, Northern Arizona, Northern Colorado and Portland State.

That is the real story here. Southern Utah is not just filling a hole. It is helping define a shifting FCS calendar, one where independents, new programs and conference returns are reshaping who plays whom and when.