At Big Ten football media days, commissioner Kevin Warren talks about adding USC and UCLA, further expansion and athletes' concerns
INDIANAPOLIS – Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren addressed several intriguing issues Tuesday on Day 1 of the league’s preseason football meetings.
Those topics included the addition of USC and UCLA, set to join the league in 2024; the possibility of future expansion; ongoing negotiations for a new media package that could generate up to $1 billion per year for the league’s programs; and student-athlete health and welfare.
Here are Warren’s thoughts on those issues.
On adding USC and UCLA, which will bring the Big Ten to 16 institutions
"We are blessed now, especially with the addition of the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, that we will have a footprint in the three major media markets from New York to Los Angeles to Chicago, which will allow us to be even bolder when it comes to corporate partnership and activation. So I'll look forward to building a very successful and robust business in that area. ...
“These are two academic and athletic institutions and a strong location in Los Angeles with great rich history and tradition, who are innovative, who are forward thinking, who are bold, who will make us even stronger as a conference. And I look forward to welcoming these two fine institutions into the Big Ten Conference, to working with them, to making our conference even stronger than it already is."
On the possibility of adding more schools to the Big Ten
“I get asked every single day: What’s next? It may include future expansion, but it will be done for the right reasons at the right time with our student-athletes, academic and athletic empowerment at the center of any and all decisions that we will make regarding any further expansions.
“We will not expand just to expand. 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.”
On the possibility that additional travel will have a deleterious effect on student-athletes’ academic life
“We have two years now to plan. We have built a Big Ten kind of readiness committee that we'll activate here to start working with USC and UCLA to get ideas as far as what we can do. We have two of our universities at Northwestern and Nebraska going to Dublin to play a football game. How many young students – forget about sports, but in college – have an opportunity to travel to Dublin?
“Because of that, I'm so proud of what Nebraska and Northwestern are doing; they're amplifying that trip to be able to learn. So, I look at it as not a negative, I look at it as a positive from an academic standpoint.
“And what we'll do is we'll work through these next two years from a scheduling component to make sure that we create the environment that's most healthy and holistic for our student-athletes, which is one of the reasons I've started the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee to be able to listen to them to say what's important.”
On the media rights deal that could have Big Ten games televised on multiple networks, from morning until late into the night
"I think sometimes later time zones on the West Coast, people looked at it as a negative, and I always looked at it as a positive. So for us in the Big Ten to be – we're in four time zones, we will be in 2024: East, Central, Mountain, and West. So now we'll be able to provide content all the way from the morning into the night and lead into some really incredible programming. So I think the value of being across four time zones for multiple reasons is really important. ...
"So I'm looking forward to building a brand to be fortified and strong from Los Angeles to New Jersey and everywhere in between."
On the idea of revenue sharing for athletes
"One of the reasons why we're forming our Student-Athlete Advisory and Advocacy Committee is just to be able to have discussions not only about money but about environment. I'm fortunate because Greta and I are the parents of two former college student-athletes but one current student-athlete. So one of the discussions we're blessed to have around the dinner table center around what we can do to make sure that we're creating the best college athletic experience for our student-athletes.
"I've already started some dialogue with our student-athletes. We're going to amplify that committee here quickly. I want to hear it from them. I want to be a great listener to figure out what is important to them. It's so easy to talk about money and share money, but what does that really mean? I want to make sure that I listen and learn to be able to have big ears and a small mouth to truly understand what's important to them.
"And that's going to be one of the topical areas when we have our first Parents Council meeting coming up later this year, next month in August. I think it's actually next week."
On expanding the College Football Playoff field, currently at four teams
"I'm 100 percent supportive of College Football Playoff expansion. I'm excited that we now will have some new members in the room who will have very creative ideas. ...What is that right number? We'll figure it out. I'm confident we'll get College Football Playoff expansion resolved. I feel very strongly that we need to open it up to have multiple media partners, that we need to have from the college football standpoint. We need to take a holistic view. We need to make sure we protect some of the critical bowl relationships.
"So as we work through all these, whether it's automatic qualifier, whatever the case may be, I'm confident as we get these new individuals in a room, get these issues on the table, that we'll be able to reach some resolution and again make sure we ask ourselves the right questions for the right reasons at the right time for our student-athletes and our fans."
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Big Ten football media days: Kevin Warren addresses several topics
