INDIANAPOLIS –– After a heavily-scrutinized series of decisions in his first year as Big Ten commissioner in 2020 –– not least of which being the cancellation of the conference’s fall sports season last August –– Kevin Warren made his highly-anticipated in-person appearance at Big Ten Media Days Thursday to, in theory, address some of those talking points.
Among other things, Warren announced that former Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez will join the conference as a special advisor, and fielded questions about College Football Playoff and potential conference expansion, name, image and likeness and whether or not he would change anything about the way in which he handled the 2020 season looking back.
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“I don't have any regrets,” Warren said at the podium at Lucas Oil Stadium. “I mean, quite naturally, we all look back over our lives and are there things we wish we would have maybe done a little bit differently, but if I had the chance to do it all over last year, I would do, make the same decisions that we made, because one of the things that I've always tried to focus on, and you heard me say it today, is making sure we keep our student-athletes at the center of all of our decisions, athletically, academically, regarding college football playoff expansion, relationships with our media partners, relationships with our bowl partners, all of those different things.”
In fact, Warren said despite the difficulties of the COVID-plagued year, it was actually one of the best of his life.
“Last year will be one of the years that I will look to that I continually grew as a person and that I'm grateful for to go through all the things that we went through,” Warren said. “So I'm one of those people that always look for the positives. But for last year I wouldn't have had the number of meetings that I had with our athletic directors and our coaches and our chancellors and presidents and our fans, and so what it did is allowed me to really understand the importance of relationships, the importance of communications, but also to have a gratitude for life.”
Warren did, however, concede that communication across the conference “wasn't as clean and perfect as it could have been at times,” during the lead-up to the 2020 season.
One quickly developing hot button topic in the college football world is the reported exploration of Texas and Oklahoma into leaving the Big 12 and joining the SEC. Warren did not delve into specifics on the matter, but said in terms of potential conference expansion in the future, he is “constantly evaluating what's in the best interests of the conference.”
On the subject of playoff expansion, the proposed move from four teams to 12 that could go into effect as early as 2023, Warren said he will need more time to vet the concept with administrators and other invested parties before he comes to a fully-formed opinion.
“I am focused on picking the appropriate time to really spend the time, energy, and effort with the necessary constituents to determine when the right time is and what we need to do, how we need to structure any potential expansion of college football playoffs,” Warren said.
With student-athletes across the country gaining the ability to profit off of their name, image and likeness rights at the start of July, Warren said the Big Ten conference embraces the empowerment of its players. Warren also said he believes federal NIL legislation still needs to be put in place moving forward.
Warren said the Big Ten plans to have a policy in place regarding game forfeitures if teams are unable to play due to COVID-19 this season, but that no final decision has been made as of yet.
Ohio State head coach Ryan Day, senior tight end Jeremy Ruckert and offensive lineman Thayer Munford, as well as junior defensive end Zach Harrison, will all appear at the second day of festivities at Big Ten Media Days on Friday at Lucas Oil Stadium.
