Commissioner Kevin Warren kicked off all the festivities of Big Ten media days on Thursday with a very long-winded introduction before he got to the questions that media members had in their quivers, ready to take aim with. There haven’t been too many formats in which the media have been able to ask some tough questions, and they were ready.
Many topics were touched upon, but the one everyone wanted to know had to do with reflection upon how things were handled with the poor communication, mishandling of the season, and much more last year. Finally, the very last question Warren was met with asked if he had any regrets about how the pandemic and the 2020 season were handled last year.
He almost dodged the bullet.
And if you thought there was going to be some introspective with ownership and lessons learned, well — you would be wrong. It appears as though Warren believes that he and the Big Ten offices handled everything masterfully according to his response.
“I don’t have any regrets,” Warren told the media Thursday. “Quite naturally, we all look back on our lives and other things that we wish we would have maybe done a little bit differently. But if I had the chance to do it all over last year, I would make the same decisions that we made. Maybe the communication wasn’t as clean or as perfect as it could have been at times, and I think you’ve seen improvement with that.
“When you add it all up, I think the biggest thing that I learned was the importance of being grateful, and also having a sense of grace, not only with ourselves but with others.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6XH_29zfFs
OK. Well. It sure sounds like there were some regrets. He toed right up to the line, even admitting communication wasn’t good (sort of), but then said that he’d make the same decisions if presented with the same set of circumstances. It doesn’t really make sense, and we’re just left to believe that the guy pulling the strings really feels like all of what we saw went about as well as it could?
Here, let me help you out Warren. Your response probably should have gone something more like this:
“Well, you know, it was a trying time, and we were all doing the best we could — myself included. It’s sometimes during the most trying times when mistakes are made that we have to learn from them. I truly acted with the best intentions, but there’s no doubt some things could have been done differently. All we can do — all I can do — is learn from those, move forward, and try to continue to represent the Big Ten and make it the premier conference in America.”
There, that wasn’t so hard was it? I guess we can all hope that what was being said from behind the podium was just a guy with extreme confidence and that hopefully Warren has learned some lessons and is working to put them into action.
The best leaders use those around them to help make decisions, then stick by them through it all. However, afterward, the best of the best are able to learn from mistakes, admit when they were wrong, and make future plans to be better.
There’s no way the Big Ten’s handling of things last season will be studied in PR classes at the same institutions Warren represents. Just the opposite actually.
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