The IHSA’s Big 12 Conference will include a 12th football team for the spring 2021 season, as well as a three-week tournament to decide a regular-season league champion.

Quincy Notre Dame on Thursday afternoon was announced as the conference’s temporary member in football only. The move echos one made by Teutopolis in August, when that school shifted to the Apollo Conference for one school year, though that was in all sports.

Such moves are being made in response to the IHSA’s COVID-19 pandemic guidelines, especially as they pertain to travel and competition restrictions.

“Adding Quincy Notre Dame for football brings the Big 12 to 12 members, meaning every school has a conference opponent during the seven-week regular season,” a league press release reads. “The first three weeks of the conference schedule will include traditional local rivals. The final three weeks will consist of a conference tournament, crowning a regular-season Big 12 champion on Week 7.”

Champaign Central athletic director Jane Stillman via email clarified that “the final three weeks” means Weeks 5 through 7 on the Big 12 teams’ calendar. She said this tournament plan, which “will be a matchup of all the teams by record,” has been in the works since August and will have its format finalized at a later date.

Centennial, Central, Danville and Urbana are local full-time Big 12 members and are joined by non-area schools Bloomington, Normal Community, Normal West, Peoria, Peoria Manual, Peoria Notre Dame and Peoria Richwoods.

Quincy Notre Dame is part of the West Central Conference, which fielded just three football teams last school year.

Colin Likas is the preps coordinator at The News-Gazette. He can be reached at clikas@news-gazette.com, or on Twitter at @clikasNG.