For Big Ten's sake, Kevin Warren's second act needs to be better than his first

INDIANAPOLIS – Emerging out of one of the most divisive, chaotic years in Big Ten history, Kevin Warren adopted a purely optimistic attitude at his first-ever conference media days appearance Thursday. 

He walked onto the field at Lucas Oil Stadium — where, as the Big Ten Network’s Dave Revsine pointed out, the league’s journey will for the first time begin where it ends — facing questions about name, image and likeness, a yet-to-be-formalized COVID policy and college football’s greatest hit, conference expansion. 

More philosophically, Warren walked into a second full year on the job that looks, right now, to be almost as difficult as his first. And while the COVID-hit 2020 season was more immediately fragile and complex, what lies in front of Warren now will define the Big Ten’s next generation, and thus, his tenure. 

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He cannot afford anymore growing pains. 

“We’re at an inflection point in college athletics,” Warren rightly observed during his question-and-answer session Thursday. “These are the kinds of issues that we all will be dealing with this year and for many years in the future. That’s the world we live in right now. 

“From where we sit, we’re always constantly evaluating what’s in the best interests of the conference.”

The conference’s interests have rarely seemed more misaligned than they were almost one year ago to the day, when the Big Ten called off football and descended into acrimony. 

Rarely had a league that prides itself on harmony and joined-up action been so publicly at odds with itself. Players organized on social media, while their parents picketed outside the Big Ten’s suburban Chicago offices. Coaches (and some ADs) not-so-gently suggested they might take their business to a conference that would let them play in the fall. 

Eventually, the Big Ten played and completed its season, however choppy and truncated. But the experience left Warren chastened, and the league skeptical of its new commissioner. 

“It was one of the best years of my life,” Warren said, underlining how much he felt he learned and the relationships he said he forged through a rocky fall and winter, relationships that taught him “the importance of people, the importance of relationships, and (that) what makes college football special is our people and our relationships.” 

Warren had better cling tightly to those. The days ahead may not be plagued by the uncertainty of a year dealing with COVID, but they will be no less tricky. Many of the questions facing the league and its leader do not have easy answers. 

Like the Big Ten’s policy regarding positive COVID tests, and how it will manage games that cannot be played. 

Unlike the SEC, which spelled out its rules early in its media days this month, the Big Ten has yet to formalize its procedures. Warren said the league “decentralized” such issues to let schools first work through their own protocols, with conference-wide rules to be born out of those in the coming weeks. 

It’s likely most schools already have such policies — things like vaccination requirements, whether athletes need to be tested if vaccinated, contract tracing, etc. — formalized. But it was still startling to see the nation’s oldest conference less than 40 days out from its opener without a formal league-wide policy. 

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COVID is the near-term concern. The 10-year view is even harder to reconcile. 

News broke earlier this week that the SEC will seek to add Texas and Oklahoma — arguably the two biggest brands in college football not already affiliated with the Big Ten or the SEC — in a fresh and aggressive round of conference expansion. 

A decade ago, it was the Big Ten igniting realignment of the Football Bowl Subdivision, adding Nebraska and later Maryland and Rutgers, while the SEC followed suit. 

Now, if the SEC’s power play pays off, the Big Ten will have no choice but to respond. But how? Make a play for Notre Dame? Try and raid the ACC? 

Warren wouldn’t speculate, nor should he. But from the perspective of what matters in conference expansion (brand power, bottom line, national appeal, television market share, historic success in football), there aren’t a truckload of obvious candidates. 

The perception the last time this kind of upheaval hit was that the Big Ten was the smarter, more calculating, more mature conference, and that the SEC could afford to keep up simply on the strength of its brand and the size of its wallet. This week’s news positions the SEC as both more appealing and more calculating, putting the Big Ten a lap down early in the race. 

Expansion will dominate the discussion early this season, but there are countless other issues on Warren’s desk. 

He joined many other leaders in college athletics in calling Thursday for a federal solution to name, image and likeness, but until that comes, the conference will need to lead and guide where it can. 

The Big Ten has a TV deal worth $440 million annually to its members that expires in two years. Warren’s moves now, realignment not least among them, will help determine how much more lucrative he can make what has become one of the most prominent measuring sticks — television revenue share — in college athletics. 

Playoff expansion. The future of the Rose Bowl. This list could go on. 

Warren’s smartest move this summer might have been the appointment of former Wisconsin coach and athletic director Barry Alvarez. No one knows the Big Ten better than Alvarez, who brings enormous gravitas to his role. 

Alvarez’s official position, according to Warren, will be special adviser for football. It’s easy to imagine his coat buttoning up tight over other behind-the-scenes duties as well. Warren can have no better consiglieri. 

Warren — and the Big Ten — will need him. The second-year commissioner was right when he said college athletics has reached an inflection point. He could say the same about his conference specifically. 

“I am really energized and excited,” he told one reporter during his Q&A. “That’s why I came here: to do everything we can to make this the best conference in college athletics, empower student-athletes and deal with issues like you’re addressing.”

Warren swears up and down he came out of the chaos of 2020 better equipped for the job, stronger in his relationships and just as firm in his conviction to put the Big Ten at the forefront of college athletics’ shifting landscape. The conference needs that growth to show quickly. 

It can hardly afford otherwise.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.