"What is the essence of regret?"
A question for the ages, pondered by Heidegger or Sheryl Crow or an apology note to my girlfriend in 11th grade.
Instead, this Deep Thought came from the brain of the Big Ten's extremely-in-charge commissioner when asked, in an abbreviated Q&A session after an introductory speech lasting 26 minutes, if he had any regrets about decisions made in his first 18 months as the ostensible leader of one of the most important sports organizations in the United States.
And the "essence of regret" for Kevin Warren is, apparently, that he has no regrets.
Does he feel bad about some of the decisions he's made? Sure. Would he change a single one of them? Evidently not!
...if I had the chance to do it all over last year, I would (make) the same decisions that we made, because one of the things that I've always tried to focus on, and you heard me say it today, is making sure we keep our student-athletes at the center of all of our decisions [...]
A year of blunders, late starts on important initiatives and ideas, and extremely poor communication couldn't be wiped away with one press conference to start Big Ten football media days. Kevin Warren wasn't going to say anything at that podium that could convince people with their minds set against him that he had turned to corner on this job. But he could've started the process. He could've taken more than seven questions (two of which barely registered as that). He could've had concrete answers to ongoing, urgent events. He could've shown humility or contrition for things that he and his office screwed up.
Instead, the only thing that Warren's press conference accomplished was to remind everyone watching of a nagging question that's been at the back of our minds since last summer:
How the hell did we get here?
On August 11th of last year, after months of radio silence from the Big Ten about their plans related to the football season, it was announced that all fall sports were going to be shut down and athletic departments were being told to prepare for a spring football season. It was disappointing, frustrating, and also apparently a choice made with the same kind of care and reasoning that you might take when choosing between Arby's and Taco Bell:
Last night, the Big Ten began hypothetically discussing what teams would do in the fall *if* the season got moved to the spring. It was contentious, as the bigger programs still want to play this fall. It marked one of the first hypothetical conversations about this topic.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) August 11, 2020
COVID-19 has made difficult choices surrounding pretty much everything about our lives necessary, and while this particular choice ended up being the wrong one, in retrospect it's easy to see it as something done out of caution and not malice. But instead of offering guidance and reasoning, Kevin Warren and the Big Ten let people lose their minds for a week (after a disastrous initial interview on BTN), fired off a sterile missive, and then went dark for a month.
In the meantime, parents, players, and coaches started a grassroots campaign built largely on the efforts of athletic director Gene Smith, president Dr. Kristina Johnson, and the Ohio State football family to figure out a way to allow college football to be played safely in 2020. It worked, in part because most of the other major conferences weren't willing to follow the Big Ten's lead, but also because it was clear from the outset that the Big Ten had badly misread the room and failed to do even basic outreach and communication.
After an abbreviated football season, that wasn't without its own COVID-related controversy and cancellations, through internal documents it was then revealed almost a full year after this mess that Johnson and Smith believed that Warren considered the letter from Ohio State football parents to Big Ten leadership to be "manufactured."
Whether Warren truly felt that way or not is irrelevant; the bigger problem is that it was evident he'd lost the room almost immediately upon taking his position.
So his press conference yesterday was a failure on a number of levels. Not only did Kevin Warren utterly fail to rebuild the lost trust between himself and the people who make up the conference that the administers, he also continued the same kind of laissez-faire attitude toward some incredibly difficult problems that require solutions ready to go.
Conference expansion?
...I know from where we sit we're always constantly evaluating what's in the best interests of the conference. It will be interesting to see how that story that you mentioned yesterday, how that evolves and where it lands [...]
The resurgence of COVID-19?
We'll get that information in early August. We'll combine it, and then we'll get together with our chancellors and presidents and other key constituents to make the determination as far as how we handle the fall. [...] (W)e have allowed our institutions to handle those issues.
Playoff expansion?
I've already started this summer of having these conversations within our internal Big Ten family in regards to their viewpoints from college football expansion, gathering information, as they called it, kind of the next couple of months are really gathering information to decide what we feel is in the best interests.
Uhhhhh how he ended up so damn cool?
I learned so much last year. I learned so much about myself.
It was endearing, in a way, when Jim Tressel used to ply his trade in word salad with the press, but that's because he was obfuscating about third string linebackers and why Jim Bollman was still drawing a paycheck. The issues that the Big Ten faces are far too important and pressing for Kevin Warren to either not have plans already prepared, or for him not to share said plan publicly if he does.
What's also frustrating is that we have seen some really fantastic administrative leadership in the Big Ten in the last year. Both Gene Smith and Dr. Kristina Johnson were outspoken advocates for players and their families, and presented multiple options and ideas to Big Ten leadership for ways to move forward last fall. They were in constant contact with the press and other Big Ten administrators, doing the work that hadn't been done in the spring and summer of 2020.
That work may become necessary again. With COVID-19 cases on the rise due to an insufficient amount of vaccinated and a variant strain of the virus more virulent and contagious, imminent conference expansion, and NIL quickly changing the landscape of college sports, it seems that concrete responses to these problems won't be coming from the Big Ten commissioner anytime soon.
