By: Doug Lesmerises (Cleveland Plain Dealer) –

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Imagine Ohio State vs. Nebraska at Cleveland Browns Stadium on Dec. 3, 2011, in the inaugural Big Ten Championship game.

David Gilbert, president of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission, can see it.

We don’t go after an event if we don’t believe it belongs in Cleveland,” Gilbert said this week.

The Big Ten hasn’t even officially announced that it definitely will create a football championship game, so the conference certainly hasn’t taken formal bids from any potential sites for the game. (Commissioner Jim Delany should update the process at the Big Ten meetings on Aug. 2-3.) But with Nebraska accepted as a new conference member and the league expanding to 12 teams for the 2011 season, it’s easy to see why a title game is a near lock and why at least five stadiums have expressed an interest in hosting the game.

The SEC Championship, a reasonable comparison in another football hotbed, made more than $14 million in profit for that conference last season, while the city of Atlanta, which has hosted the game at the Georgia Dome since 1994, reportedly generates $30 million in business from the game.

“It should be a lot like having a bowl game,” Gilbert said of the Big Ten Championship. “If it’s moved to a city that is in big-time Big Ten country, that game should be a sellout.”

The logical leaders to host that sellout are Indianapolis, a convenient and fan-friendly site with a history of hosting major events from the Super Bowl to the Final Four to the Big Ten basketball tournaments; and Chicago, the home of Big Ten headquarters and the most entertaining metropolis in the Big Ten footprint.

“There have been some discussions with the Big Ten to let them know we would really be interested in this,” said John Dedman, the director of communications for the Indiana Sports Corporation. “With the basketball tournaments, we have ongoing discussions with them as we plan for them, but by no means are we very far down the road.”

Other cities, Cleveland included, also have expressed initial interest to the conference. But Indy vs. Chicago is part of a bigger debate that supersedes location, and gets to the heart of Big Ten football more than the selection of any one city. Should the game be played indoors or outdoors?

Another indoor contender would be…….

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