The IHSA schedule release often confirms many things we already knew about the upcoming 2023 season.

But with a little digging, the differences and subtle changes begin to emerge, and as always, no two seasons are ever the same.

Let’s start with the most obvious difference between last year and this year: The list of playoff eligible teams has increased by 10, from 491 last year to 501 this year.

Most of the reason for this change resides within the Chicago Public League, which experienced another substantial realignment year over year.

Last season, 52 Chicago Public League programs were playoff eligible, with another 32 schools participating but ineligible to qualify for IHSA postseason consideration. Those numbers shifted this season, along with several conference designations changing that number to 58 CPL eligible programs and 25 schools in divisions ineligible for playoff qualification.

Academy, Collins, Englewood STEM, Lindblom, Military/Bronzeville, Noble/Academy, Noble/ASPIRA, Noble/DRW Trading, Noble/Golder, Noble/Johnson, Noble/Muchin, Orr, Phoenix and Solorio are the schools that have added playoff eligibility from last season.

Playoff eligible schools in 2022 that are no longer eligible are Dunbar, Julian, Kennedy, Little Village, South Shore, Steinmetz and UCCS/Woodlawn, as they have moved down to the Blue Divisions [ineligible for playoff qualification].

Eligible CPS conferences also decreased from seven to six. But the upper echelon schools in the CPS were regrouped into one 16-team conference with multiple crossovers instead of four grouped conferences of four schools each.

White Division conferences are eight-team groupings other than one exception. The White-Central has 10 teams and will only have its top two finishers eligible to qualify for the playoffs. Six of the 10 teams in the White-Central are playoff eligible for the first time.

Five other schools that either ended their seasons midway through the 2022 campaign or canceled prior to its beginning are giving it another go in 2023. Fisher and Sandwich called off their seasons before they started last year. Westmont played a limited schedule, while Port Byron Riverdale and Urbana cut things short.

One non-CPS school, Rock Island Alleman, also announced it would not be competing in varsity football this season and hopes to return in 2024. The Pioneers’ move dropped the Western Big 6 Conference down to seven teams.

One of the common questions all of this program movement fosters is what it means for the playoff landscape in general? For the first time last season, we had a 4-5 team make the 256-team field as an at-large team (Buffalo Grove), and while the number of school competing in 11-man football increased, the possibility of a 4-5 team or teams making the field again this season remains very much alive and something that will be worth monitoring all year.

There are two new conferences and another merger of two other conferences under a new name. And a number of interesting shakeups within the conferences.

The two new conferences are the Chicagoland Christian and Chicagoland Prairie. Both new leagues took parts of the Metro Suburban Conference, which now is defunct. Other leagues that saw their membership impacted by those two leagues’ emergence were the Vermilion Valley, Three Rivers and the CCL/ESCC.

The Chicagoland Christian consists of Aurora Christian, Hope Academy, Christ the King, St. Edward, Bishop McNamara, Chicago Christian, Wheaton Academy and Marian Central Catholic.

The Chicagoland Prairie will open play with Dwight, Elmwood Park, Walther Christian, Ridgewood, Ottawa Marquette, St. Bede, Seneca and Westmont.

[ Who's in the Chicagoland Prairie and why did they join? ]

The Lincoln Trail and Prairieland Conferences merged and formed two divisions [Large and Small] based on enrollment.

There were multiple shifts in many conferences and realignments of schedules followed for many of them. The most notable change came in the CCL/ESCC, where the addition of two programs, IC Catholic and St. Francis [Aurora Central Catholic also will join the league at a future date], made an even more powerful league that much stronger.

The newbies were placed in the CCL/ESCC Orange along with Nazareth and Fenwick, while all of the other divisions saw some sort of shakeup as well, including the powerhouse CCL/ESCC Blue where St. Rita took the place of Marist, where the Mustangs will now be joined in league play by Brother Rice, Mount Carmel and Loyola.

Lincoln left the Apollo Conference and became the 11th member of the Central State Eight Conference. [Quincy Notre Dame will be added to the conference in 2024 to allow the league to go to a two-division format]. Eleven teams doesn’t work for even scheduling, so the Central State Eight formed an alliance with another odd-number conference, the Big Twelve, to accommodate for the scheduling imbalance. It led to some fascinating nonconference matchups, including one right out of the box when Rochester travels to Peoria.

The Central Illinois lost Sullivan to the Lincoln Prairie [which also added Nokomis from the independent ranks to become a 10-team closed conference] and also voted to remove powerhouse St. Teresa from its ranks. St. Teresa is now an independent program.

Deerfield was moved from the Central Suburban North, a conference it has dominated recently, to the much deeper Central Suburban South. Niles West moves to the CSN to take Deerfield’s place.

There were no changes to the DuPage Valley and SouthWest Suburban’s membership groups, although Bolingbrook will leave the SWSC in 2024 for the SouthWest Prairie, but the two conferences did enter a nonconference game agreement with the larger programs in the SWSC in Week 3.

Belleville Althoff has left the South Seven Conference and is now an independent. The league has just five members now and will not have an automatic bid qualifier for the state playoffs. (Six is the minimum for that designation, barring the IHSA granting an exception).

Riverside-Brookfield was the lone team from the Metro Suburban collapse that didn’t find a home in one of the newly formed conferences and is now a member of the Southland Conference, giving that league an even number of participants for the first time since the Rich Township merger of three schools within that district.

With the departure of Seneca and Dwight, the Vermilion Valley Football Alliance is now a 10-team locked conference instead of a two-division, 12-team grouping.

There now are 11 teams in Illinois without conferences, down from 14 a season ago, with aforementioned 1A power Marquette among the independents finding a new home.