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SAN ANTONIO — At the NCAA convention on Thursday, university administrators listened to outgoing President Mark Emmert’s farewell address and was greeted by his replacement, Charlie Baker. A few hours ago, Big His Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren was announced as the new president of the Chicago Bears.
It was a vivid capture of a day of radical change in college athletics. The impermanence of recent years is not merely transient. It is a continuous way of life. From players to coaches to administrators, it feels like everyone is on the move while the entire company doesn’t have a consistent direction. (Other than pleading at the feet of Congress to intervene to solve some of its problems.)
Emmert’s passing the baton to Baker was announced a few weeks ago, and Warren’s departure was the big news of the day. His tenure lasted only three years, which was a short time by the standards of previous commissionerships. His league has been a very important three years, as he serves as one of the major forces pushing the tectonic plates of college sports in opposite directions.
With Warren’s resignation, the terms of the current Power 5 Conference Commissioners are as follows: Southeastern Conference’s Greg Sankey his eight years. His 23 and a half months of Jim Phillips on the Atlantic Coast his conference. In the case of George Kuryavkov in Pac-12 he is 21 months. Brett Yormark of the Big 12 is his six and a half months old. And other than Sankey and Phillips, they arrived with no college sports background.
The trend to move from college student to off-campus business leader comes with its own risks and rewards. Lord knows the industry needs new visions and ideas. But outsiders who aren’t invested in college sports benefits, or who don’t understand its arcane quirks and challenges, may also be quick to bail out. .
Warren was involved in other recent job searches before becoming Bears president. Yes. Anyone want to lead this company?
As for Warren, the question is whether he’s ever stepped on both feet in the Big Ten and/or jumped before being pushed. Despite positioning the conference for its unprecedented wealth and geographic reach, he did not do all he could to extend his contract.
Warren’s tenure as Commissioner of the Big Ten ends with many strong emotions in his wake. He left behind a huge fan base, a detractor, and a strong ambivalence in college athletics.
Warren’s supporters point to a major development in the summer of 2022. The expansion to include USC and UCLA captures the Los Angeles market in one fell swoop. And a whopping media rights deal that brings him over $7 billion in seven years. They credit the Power 5 conference’s first black commissioner not only for breaking down barriers, but for acting on an ambitious vision for the future.
Warren leaves the conference after three volatile but ultimately profitable years.
Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports
Warren’s detractors haven’t forgotten the unwarranted cancellation and uncancellation of the league’s fall 2020 football season at the height of the pandemic. They will also credit others (mostly his Fox) for making the Big Ten expansion work. He sailed into college sports from an NFL background, mistakenly thinking he was smarter than everyone else, and has been labeled as arrogant.
Warren is a charismatic one-on-one communicator, but he’s not very good at speaking in front of large audiences. He took the job during his worst time—when the pandemic began—and endured irrational backlash from some fans during that time. These included death threats that made him wary of parking his car at the conference headquarters. Heading into 2022, that difficult time was a decisive stretch for his commissionership.
Warren, Fox, and the Big Ten then carried out a ruthless raid on the Pac-12, collapsing the so-called “alliance” between these two leagues and the ACC. The alliance grew out of resistance to the expansion of the college football playoffs. Or, to be more honest, he was born out of anger at the SEC over the acquisition of Texas and Oklahoma in 2021 and destabilization, with playoff expansion talks underway.
Ultimately, Warren may have tied arms between these two leagues to buy time before storming either. When his league was what he wanted, he reversed course in favor of an expanded playoff (which everyone eventually did). It revealed a level of shrewdness and cunning that some hadn’t.
Six and a half months after the addition of USC and UCLA, the tide of restructuring has subsided, but it’s still not completely under the surface. This is still a volatile time and some dynamics are still at work. among them:
- The Pac-12 media rights deal, which has been in negotiations for months in 2022, has yet to be announced. Until we can, the future of the league remains uncertain.
- The ultimate restructuring lever, Notre Dame will be the next big deal maker (or deal breaker). Fighting Irish are expected to improve their overall earnings to the extent that they can remain independent in football, but that will also be a wait-and-see development.
- The 14 ACCs remain locked into ESPN contracts through 2036, maintaining an uncomfortable status quo. There has been considerable debate about a group of schools trying to challenge media entitlement agreements and force them to leave, but it’s a tough number to reach. Many industry observers believe North Carolina and Virginia will be the hottest expansion targets other than the Notre Dame name, potentially sparking a turf war between the SEC and the Big Ten to add them.
While everything boils down, the Big Ten need to get to work finding new leaders: Gene Smith of Ohio State University and Josh Whitman of the University of Illinois. A meeting once passed about Phillips, who was serving as his AD at a member school of Northwestern University. Can he get it on the rebound?
Alternatively, the league could return to off-campus pools. Fox Sports president Mark Silverman, who helped make the Big Ten Network famous, would be a logical choice, especially after the two entities linked arms for the next seven years.
Whoever takes the job is unlikely to replicate former Commissioner Jim Delaney’s 30-year career. That kind of permanence may be lost forever in college sports as the pace of change and the search for direction intensify.
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