He came, he canceled, he conquered.
And now he’s gone.
With Kevin Warren off to the NFL to become president of the Chicago Bears after an eventful three-year as Big Ten commissioner, it’s time to look ahead.
Warren leaves the Big Ten in a good place, with the league having realized its manifest destiny last summer — see: the additions of USC and UCLA — then signing a seven-year, $7 billion media rights deal.
But that doesn’t mean the work is done.
And, because no one asked, here are a few league-specific* orders of business that should be atop the next commissioner’s agenda (*we’ll save the big-picture issues facing college athletics for another day):
■ 1. Protect the Ohio State-Michigan game
In anticipation of the LA schools joining the party in 2024, there’s a movement in the Big Ten to eliminate football divisions and simply match the two best teams in the conference championship game.
Great idea, in theory.
Horrible idea, actually.
Imagine if Ohio State and Michigan had turned around and played again in the league title game the past two seasons, as would have been the cast in a no-division format.
The impending move to a 12-team playoff will do enough to dilute the all-or-nothing nature of The Game. To invite the possibility of playing a game fraught with such enormous emotional stakes in consecutive weeks should be a non-starter.
Some things in college sports are perfect just the way they are, and Ohio State and Michigan meeting on the last Saturday of the regular season — absent the threat of a gimmicky, made-for-TV rematch the next week — is one of them.
Bottom line: The greatest rivalry in sports is among the biggest, most lucrative properties in sports (for context, more people watched OSU-UM in November than tuned in for Duke-North Carolina ... in the Final Four). The Big Ten needs to protect it, not diminish it.
The league should either keep its two divisions, slotting USC and UCLA in the West and moving Purdue to the East. Or it ought to eliminate divisions and its championship game.
Give me Option B.
With the expanded playoff, the league title game will become nothing more than a pointless money grab (in other words, it’s here to stay). The league’s top two teams will usually make the playoff anyway.
No league title game also means there’s only upside to life without divisions. The way I see it, each school would have a pair of protected annual games (for Ohio State, make it Michigan and Penn State; for Michigan, it would be Ohio State and Michigan State), then rotate through everyone else. OSU and UM would play USC, Nebraska, and Wisconsin as often as it does Rutgers, Maryland, and Indiana. Sign me up.
■ 2. Fight for a better football playoff
The single biggest playoff obstructionist was former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who was so in bed with the Rose Bowl — and the bowl establishment — that upon retirement he became a consultant for the game.
The new commissioner can be on the right side of history.
And a good start would be thinking outside the box and pushing to keep more playoff games inside the Big Ten footprint.
With the postseason tournament set to go to 12 teams in 2024, the first-round games will be played on campus, but why stop there?
The quarterfinals — which will be played at bowls on a rotating basis — should be played at home stadiums, too, before shifting to neutral sites for the the semifinals and title game.
Why should Big Ten schools be the ones that always have to travel long distances for their biggest games? And how long have fans in our parts bemoaned that teams from down south will never have to play real football in the frosted Midwestern elements?
The Big Ten needs to put its own interests ahead of the bowls and fight the good fight. The beauty of college football is the pageantry and the spectacle, the grand old stadiums, the energy that electrifies a college town on a home Saturday. A huge playoff game in Ann Arbor or Columbus or State College or Madison would would be awesome in a way the Cotton or Peach Bowl can’t touch.
■ 3. Fix men’s basketball
A few Big Ten facts: The conference has produced as many men’s basketball champions since 2000 as the MAC (zero); only three of its teams have made the second weekend of the past two NCAA tournaments; and all of two of its teams are currently ranked (No. 3 Purdue and No. 18 Wisconsin).
Add it all up, and you might start to believe the league either sucks or its style doesn’t translate to March.
Both narratives are misguided.
Truth is, the Big Ten has been an elite hoops conference the past two decades, including in March. Since Michigan State won it all in 2000, the Big Ten has been represented in the Final Four 14 times and the championship game seven times. It’s proven it can punch with anyone.
Still, the trend lines could be better, and a fresh set of eyes can’t hurt.
I know one guy who has a few ideas.
New Maryland coach Kevin Willard — who spent the past 12 seasons at Seton Hall in the Big East — was on a roll the other day in all but calling the Big Ten’s basketball leadership a bunch of two-bit morons.
“Obviously, it's a football conference, and I think they're worried about football. I don't think they understand how to schedule a basketball game," Willard told reporters. “The Big East and Big Ten are totally different. The Big East is an all-basketball conference. ... You’re never on the road more than two games. We’d never have our first five out of seven on the road. You know, the Big East ... that’s why Villanova has won two national championships and went to three Final Fours just because the Big East understood how to take care of their teams. ... There’s a reason why they haven’t won a championship since 2000.”
Now, I might ask, if the Big East took care of everyone so well, how come Willard’s teams never made it even to the Sweet 16?
But that’s neither here nor there.
Get with it, Big Ten!
First Published January 15, 2023, 11:58 p.m.
