INDIANAPOLIS — Kevin Warren had taken off his suit coat, tugged his blue tie down and undone a couple of buttons on his white dress shirt. Sitting casually in a chair in a field-level suite at Lucas Oil Stadium, the commissioner of the Big Ten was relaxed yet animated.
His duties at the podium leading off Big Ten media days were over Tuesday, and it was here behind the scenes that Warren let his engaging personality shine through. This was a man in a far different place from his impossible first year on the job, when he was pilloried when his conference fumbled its way through the pandemic. In the span of time it took him to plunder the Pac-12 and expand his league from sea to shining sea, Kevin Warren and his league have a newfound authority at the vanguard of college athletics.
“I think it’s changed the narrative on the Big Ten Conference,” Warren told Sports Illustrated in a wide-ranging interview. “We shrunk the United States in one announcement.”
