When the old Highmark Stadium permanently closed its doors, the Section VI football championships became homeless.
That is no longer the case. Now, the Section VI Championships have a home, the University at Buffalo’s Broadview Stadium.
The moving of the game site was announced in a press event at the University at Buffalo on Saturday. The Section VI championships will take place on Thursday, Nov. 12 and Friday, Nov. 13.
“I think it’s a no-brainer. I mean that’s the only Division I program in town and when we found out we couldn’t be at Highmark this year, that’s the best choice to be at, the next best thing,” Section VI executive director Mark DiFilippo said.
The move comes after the Section VI Championships were previously held at Highmark Stadium for 47 years.
Once it became clear that the Section VI championships were not following the Buffalo Bills across the street — the new stadium will use natural grass — DiFilippo got in contact with the athletic department at the University at Buffalo to try to move the game to their stadium. The initial talks between the two groups started early in the Fall of 2025.
The talks centered on the feasibility of hosting the games at the Broadview Stadium as the school has to also consider their teams.
“A lot of it has to do with logistics and are they going to be able to give us that much time of their main facility that they’re trying to run Division I programs out of,” DiFilippo said. “… They got to feel comfortable based on their schedules … volume of people on campus, working with their public safety department and various departments that they have to see if it’s feasible or not.”
The agreement between the two sides is for this year only and will be reevaluated on a year-by-year basis by both Section VI and the University at Buffalo.
Once the championship games get closer, DiFilippo and his team and the staff at UB will walk through the stadium and make sure that everything is ready for the games.
Last year, there was one Niagara region team to win their Section VI championship at the Bills stadium, Newfane. Over the 47-year history of the games at Highmark Stadium, there were 24 Section VI champions from the greater Niagara region.
The head coach for that Newfane team is Chuck Nagel who now has the honor of being the last greater Niagara region head coach to win a Section VI title at Highmark Stadium.
“I’m super excited that UB has allowed the Section VI schools to play the championships there,” Nagel said. “I think that’s the next best fit. You know walking out in that stadium is just as impressive. It’s still a big time college stadium and we played a 7on7 tournament there last summer and it was awesome.”
Despite leaving Highmark Stadium this year, the door is still open for Section VI to return to the home of the Bills in future years. The newly built 62,000-seat stadium is expected to officially open in the summer of 2026.
The timeline of when the Section VI championships could return to the NFL’s newest stadium is still up in the air according to DiFilippo.
“The Bills have been tremendous partners with us for years and they just got a brand new stadium,” DiFilippo said. “They got to figure it out before they start letting other people coming in. They got to figure out, make sure it works for them, so all the ways that they want it to work before they start filling it up with other events. So we certainly understand the decision and I’m sure that eventually there’ll be further discussions in the future.”