Big Ten, MAC football, No. 1 ranked soccer team highlight ‘Campus Check-In’

CHICAGO – The final week of September has arrived in the Chicagoland area as the weather turns cooler and fall sports get into full swing.

In football, that means the start of fulltime conference play for most schools in the State of Illinois and of interest to fans in the area.

Illinois and Northwestern will start their conference seasons in full after each playing a game early in the season going in somewhat opposite directions. The Illini lost to Indiana in what’s been the only blemish on their schedule so far and now faces Wisconsin in Madison on Saturday.

After opening their Big Ten season with a win over Nebraska, Northwestern has lost three-straight home games to Duke, Southern Illinois, and Miami of Ohio. Now 1-3, they’ll travel to Penn State Saturday to face the 11th-ranked Nittany Lions.

Meanwhile, Northern Illinois gets play going in the Mid-American Conference at Ball State Saturday after a competitive non-conference season that featured three losses in four games but competitive contests with SEC opponents Vanderbilt and Kentucky.

On the pitch, the University of Chicago’s men’s soccer team has risen to No. 1 in the Division III rankings after winning their first nine games of the season.

You can hear from all of those teams on this edition of “Campus Check-In” on WGN News Now as we look at the college sports headlines locally from this past week. Plus we take a look at other area squads that are performing well along with the start of basketball practice around the area.

Larry Hawley has it all in this edition of “Campus Check-In” on WGN News Now, which you can watch in the video above.