Kevin Warren has displayed absolutely no leadership on this whatsoever. The ACC, SEC, and Big 12 commissioners have been working towards playing football all spring and summer. Warren has not, and this is obvious.
Warren released a schedule one week as a an empty token of positivity then abruptly cancelled the fall season. The three conferences that are playing this fall all wondered what data the Big Ten has that made Warren make such an abrupt decision to cancel. If there was data out there that showed the ACC, SEC, and Big 12 they shouldn't be playing they should have it too. But Warren didn't produce any. All we got was "theres too many unknowns". He didn't produce any because he doesn't have any. While the member institutions have been working harder than Warren putting testing and safety protocols in place to have a season, the players, coaches, AD's and player parents got blindsided and have been asking for Warren to be transparent about what went into the decision. Only now, and because of 8 Nebraska players filing a lawsuit, is more information becoming known about the decision. One who is asked about what went into a decision should easily be able to answer and have the data ready to share. Warren didn't do either.
The argument that Warren is not to blame as laughable. He wields alot of power and influence and he can use it to achieve whatever ends he wants as it pertains to Big Ten interests. If he wanted to have a fall season, he would have hit the ground running in March helping his member institutions do whatever was necessary to have a fall season safely and he would have been an advocate for his AD's, coaches, and players when meeting with the school presidents. Instead he was busy building a coalition with his school presidents (who largely have contempt for college sports) to formulate the arguments and basis for not playing. Not to mention giving interviews with Yahoo news saying how he was going to turn out Big Ten athletes against Trump...yeah there is that too. When your AD's and coaches were near unanimous in wanting to play and your school presidents voted 11-3 against, that is not leadership. That is one side against another. A conference commissioner should built unity and consensus. There was 5 months during a pandemic to to this. Warren failed and IS to blame for this.
Sadly, Warren can recover if he is proven right by the other conferences cancelling their fall seasons...and it would be a stroke of luck rather than genius. That doesn't appear likely at this point. So if those three conferences play in the fall and the Big Ten does not, Warren cannot recover and should be ousted. Regardless of what happens, how we got here shows clearly that Warren cannot be trusted to lead from a position of strength.
