Kevin Warren got off to a rocky start as the Big Ten’s new commissioner after being elected to the position in June 2019.
Following his 21-year career in the NFL, most people in the college space didn’t know him. And one of their first exposures to him came a few months later when he surprised the college football world — including his peer commissioners in the Power Five — by canceling the Big Ten’s football season.
Amid a torrent of criticism, he reversed course about a month later, and the Big Ten wound up starting its football season a month after most of its conference rivals.
Two-plus years later, that shaky debut is a distant memory, replaced by a show of strength that enabled the Big Ten to expand with UCLA and USC. Soon, Warren will sign off on a lucrative media rights deal worth much more than $1 billion a year and set to be the largest media rights contract ever signed in the college world.
The Big Ten has become the first truly national college conference, stretching from the two Los Angeles schools to Rutgers in New Jersey.
There remains some debate in the industry about just how much credit Warren deserves for all of this. Would the Big Ten have found itself in such a good position without Fox driving the negotiations as the majority owner in the Big Ten Network?
When he officially started the job in January 2020, Warren inherited one of the two most powerful conferences in the country, and he has ridden that good fortune into more prosperous times.
Warren’s supporters say, regardless of how the Big Ten got there, it has solidified its standing at the top of college athletics on his watch.
Before long, we will find out exactly what the conference’s presidents think of his performance.
Warren’s contract runs through September 2024, about the same time that the Bruins and Trojans will officially join. But former commissioner Jim Delany routinely was rewarded with contract extensions and raises on the heels of momentous events, like new media contracts or expansion with Maryland, Nebraska and Rutgers.
No one expects Warren to receive around a $20 million bonus, as Delany did on his way out the door after a distinguished 30-year run leading the conference. But there is precedent for the Big Ten to consider a contract extension for Warren as a show of support after his bumpy beginning. The lack of one would send a very different signal.
