2025 football schedule release: Don’t get too comfortable with consistency

For all the hand wringing that has surrounded the IHSA football landscape in regards to conference jumping over the past few years, a casual look at how things have changed from 2024 to 2025 and one might not think that conversation has much merit.

And while there’s virtually no conferences that have seen anything more than minor changes coming for this season, don’t get too comfortable.

A litany of changes are on the way for 2026, most notably the dismantling of the short lived Southwest Valley Conference alliance of 15 teams from the former SWSC and DuPage Valley conferences.

But for at least this year, most is quiet on the conference front.

493 schools are currently playoff eligible to qualify to the state playoffs. Two schools have rejoined the fray in Rock Island Alleman, which last competed in varsity football in 2022, and Riverton, which took one season off from varsity football because of low participation numbers.

Three other schools have left the varsity ranks. Lisle and Cerro Gordo announced in the spring that they would not be competing in varsity football with the hopes of returning to the varsity mix in 2026, while Macon Meridian has moved into the 8-man division.

What does this all mean?

With the overall consistency of year to year leagues one might think that there won’t be much change to the playoff fields in late October.

But that’s likely very far from the reality because of the revamped IHSA multiplier waiver system that was announced in the spring.

The consequences of that could be sweeping with multiple schools finding themselves in higher or lower classifications because of it.

In a nutshell, just 15 schools faced some form of the 1.65 multiplier in 2024, which led to four state champions playing with a multiplier waiver.

The new protocols have 44 programs facing the 1.65 multiplier, and six of the eight state champions from 2024 playing in larger classifications in 2025.