ESPN insider reveals impact of Chicago Bears interest in Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren

When ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Kevin Warren was a top candidate for the Chicago Bears’ President/CEO position, it sent a shockwave across college football. Although there was a sense the Big Ten commissioner would someday return to his NFL roots, the timing was interesting considering the league has two teams in the College Football Playoff.

But there’s another reason for intrigue, as Thamel explained on The Paul Finebaum Show Friday: Warren’s contract situation.

“I do think when these stories come to light, it offers sunshine on what the league thinks of Kevin Warren,” Thamel said. “He is three years into what is believed to be a five-year contract, and there has been no conversation or clarity on his future. So perhaps, it’s wise to go look for a very good job.”

Warren’s tenure as Big Ten commissioner got off to a rocky start. He took over the conference in January 2020 — two months before the COVID-19 pandemic threw the world into uncertainty. Warren opted to cancel the season, but when other leagues said they’d play, he implemented a league-only schedule.

Two years later, Warren left his mark not only on the league, but also on college football as a whole. He helped land USC and UCLA after they decided to leave the Pac-12 in 2024 and orchestrated the Big Ten’s massive, landmark media rights deal. That’s led to a sense of optimism about the conference’s future and, potentially, his tenure as commissioner.

However, Thamel said it might not be that simple, and some people might not have forgotten about those 2020 decisions.

“These commissioner jobs are complex, but they’re simple at the same time,” Thamel said. “The simple part is 90% of what you’re going to be judged on is your TV deal. John Swofford left the ACC with cement shoes and went out the door. Kevin Warren [would leave] the Big Ten with a historic, $7-plus billion deal. Nobody can take that away. The significance of that is huge. It’s important. They now stretch coast-to-coast. The additions of USC and UCLA are transformative in college athletics.

“The Big Ten is better than when Kevin Warren arrived. I don’t think that’s arguable. It has been an uneven tenure, though, Paul, to be fair. He started off in 2020 with the stopping and starting and the very clunky handling of all that … it was a difficult start. He has overcome some of that, and certainly publicly because of the two big deals with the expansion and the TV deal, it has been perceived that everything has been better there. But I do think that there are a lot of residuals still from the 2020 struggles within the rank and file on campuses.”