Kevin Warren on State of Big Ten

Commissioner Meets with Media Tuesday in Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS — It’s all about evolving, Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said in his opening speech at the Big Ten football media days on Tuesday.

Tradition fades over time, and Warren knows that.

Which is why, when answering questions about conference expansion and NIL and media rights and everything else challenging his conference these days, Warren went back to the old building he used to see driving between South Bend and Chicago.

“There’s a Sears & Roebuck building on the highway that you see when you go from South Bend to Chicago, and I've pointed that out to my kids,” Warren said. “I've pointed it out to many people who have been in the car with me before.

“As a young person born in the '60s, I remember it was a happy day when my parents would bring us the Sears & Roebuck catalog to pick our birthday gifts out of. We would be excited to order those. Those catalogs aren't in existence anymore. Sears & Roebuck is not in existence anymore. So I think it's important to put very creative, aggressive, bold minds in a room together. Fortunately, I have colleagues here in the Big Ten Conference to think about these ideas.

“I don't want to be Sears & Roebuck.”

Some may think the conference is becoming something similar to Walmart as it expands and then profits from said expansion. The Big Ten is at 14 teams now, 16 in two years when USC and UCLA arrive. A billion-dollar rights package is currently being finalized.

Warren, though, doesn’t look at where the Big Ten is going as being something lifeless, without a personality, like some chain store.

“It is important for all of us in business to recognize that we're in a time of change,” he said. “I think there's two types of people in the world, that they look at change as it's a problem or they look at change as an opportunity. I'm one of those individuals that, when change occurs, I get excited about it. It's really an opportunity for us to do a lot of things that people have thought about but maybe (have) been a little bit reticent to do.

“So I'm embracing change. I'm going to be very aggressive. I've been that way my entire career. And I just want to make sure we build an environment, because our student-athletes and our fans and our universities deserve that. I just want to make sure we're aggressive in how we build this. We've got to do it in the right way for the right reasons at the right time.”

That was something Warren made clear early on in his remarks —14 teams is great, 16 teams is greater, and the Big Ten will listen if someone wants to add to that.

“We will not expand just to expand,” Warren said. “It will be strategic, it will add additional value to our conference, and it will provide a platform to even have our student-athletes be put on a larger platform so they can build their careers but also that they have an opportunity to grow and learn from an education and from an athletic standpoint.”

USC and UCLA will come into the league and full revenue shares, something that hasn’t happened in recent expansion. Their arrival means the Big Ten has the top three media markets in the United States — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — and that means an awful lot of money.

The coaches don’t seem to mind, even if it might mean a late-night West Coast start and the travel that goes with it.

“The expansion of our footprint from the East Coast to the West, you're going to wake up watching Big Ten football and go to bed watching Big Ten football,” Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald said. “So that's exciting for our players, exciting for our fans.

“Will there be a travel component to it? There is, but we're going to Dublin in the opener (against Nebraska this season), so it won't be that big of a deal.”

“The first thing that came to my mind was ‘L.A., are you kidding me? That's perfect,’” Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck said. “The Big Ten now is represented from the West Coast to the East Coast. You look at the major media markets now, that's incredibly positive.”

Fleck pointed out how he used to coach in the MAC.

“Nine-hour bus rides,” he said.

So hey, go to the coast, have a few laughs, and cash a big check.

“Change,” Fleck said, “is really healthy.”

As Warren said, it’s only the beginning.

“So I'm looking forward to building a brand to be fortified and strong from Los Angeles to New Jersey and everywhere in between,” he said.

Sears & Roebuck, this isn’t.