Zach Osterman

zach.osterman@indystar.com

Even amid its eastward expansion, the Big Ten won't be leaving Indianapolis any time soon.

The conference announced today that its football championship game will remain at Lucas Oil Stadium through 2021. Also, the men's basketball tournament will be returning to Bankers Life Fieldhouse in 2020 and '22.

Jim Delany, the Big Ten's commissioner, called the announcement "a vote of confidence by our presidents. What Indianapolis has been able to put together over a long period of time are not only great facilities, but a commitment to college athletics," he told The Star.

Indianapolis has been one of the Big Ten's primary event host cities over the last decade. The conference staged both the men's and women's basketball tournaments at Bankers Life from 2008-12, and has held its football championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium since the event's 2011 inception.

Both basketball tournaments are currently rotating between Indianapolis and Chicago, and will continue that pattern until 2017, when the conference plans to hold its men's tournament in Washington, D.C., for one year.

The 2018 men's basketball tournament host site has not been announced.

That Indianapolis-Chicago rotation will be restored in 2019, and Indy will host the men's tournament again in '20 and '22. The women's tournament will be held in Indianapolis from 2017-22.

"We have choices," Delany said. "We're fortunate that we live in two regions, with great facilities in great cities."

The Big Ten football championship game will stay in the city for more than a decade.

It's about to enter year four of a five-year contract, and today's announcement confirmed that it will continue to be held at Lucas Oil Stadium through 2021. Last year's title game between Michigan State and Ohio State drew 66,002 fans, the largest crowd in the event's three-year history.

"In building a game and building a brand, consistency — especially in the early foundational years — is very important to us," Delany said of the football championship game. "We're not trying to put the football game in a unique environment. We're looking at putting a football game in a football stadium where the variables are controlled, so the experience is consistent."

Today's announcement guarantees 14 more Big Ten championships to a city that first hosted one of the conference's postseason events in 1995 (the women's basketball tournament).

Scott Dorsey, chairman of the board of directors at Indiana Sports Corp, called the news "a blockbuster announcement" for the city.

"This football championship is really a jewel for the conference, and to be able to host it for its first 11 years is big," Dorsey said. "It allows us to think about more than the game. It allows us to think about how can we make this a community event?"

The Sports Corp estimates the economic impact of the new events to eventually add $150 million in visitor spending.

"If you look at the events that the Indiana Sports Corp and Indianapolis host, Big Ten championships are at the center of our overall strategy," Dorsey said. "The Big Ten is so integral to what we do. That's part of our brand."

Eastward expansion has become a focus for the conference in recent years, as evidenced by the admission of both Maryland and Rutgers. Holding the '17 men's basketball tournament in Washington, D.C., addresses the Big Ten's desire to increase its Eastern presence.

"I think that we've tried to find the right balance between tradition, innovation, and building and growing," Delany said. "The idea of putting an event in the East, whether it's a lacrosse championship or a basketball championship, we said we were doing that."

He pointed to the rich alumni bases several Big Ten schools enjoy on the East Coast as evidence of the conference's influence, calling it "probably as close to a national conference as there is."

But he also sees today's announcement as further evidence that, no matter its national reach, the Big Ten will strive to respect its heritage and serve all of its fans, in the Midwest and beyond.

"We have hundreds of thousands of people in each of these regions. ... Whether it's television, recruitment, events, we ought to reflect that," Delany said. "But to think that we wouldn't be very heavily invested in Chicago and Indianapolis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Omaha, is probably not seeing what we've done or listening to what we've said.

"I'm very pleased that we were able to come to this arrangement."

Follow Star reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.