With three more Chattanooga FC home matches and two more University of Tennessee at Chattanooga regular-season football games remaining on their respective schedules, it would appear that the marquee athletics events for 2021 at Finley Stadium are coming to a close.
That’s not the case.
The nine Blue Cross Bowl high school football state championship contests are coming to Chattanooga for the first time, with Finley set to host three TSSAA title games a day from Dec 2-4. The 20,412-seat facility was an annual December destination for the Football Championship Subdivision title game during the 1997-2009 seasons, but this will mark the first football action at Finley in the year’s final month since UTC beat Indiana State in a 2014 FCS playoff game.
“We’re focusing on the championship experience,” Tim Morgan, the chief officer of Chattanooga Sports, said Tuesday during the last scheduled Stadium Corp. meeting of the year. “We’re excited about all of us working together to make this happen. With this being our first year, we’re going to learn a lot, but it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Chattanooga was awarded the 2021 and 2022 Blue Cross Bowl games back in March over Cookeville, which has hosted the championship pairings the past 12 years.