This is not a complaint about USC moving to the Big Ten. Let’s be clear about that. Trojan fans have had it with the Pac-12, and rightly so. They have had to put up with a lot of problems, comical errors, and a general lack of professionalism from the conference in terms of football officiating, football scheduling, and many other realms.
There is, however, something deeply unsatisfying about USC moving to the Big Ten. It’s not so much the move itself, but the reality that the man who chiefly orchestrated it won’t oversee its actual implementation and won’t have to deal with the fallout.
Kevin Warren engineered the USC move to the Big Ten as the commissioner of the conference. However, Warren is already off to another job, working with the Chicago Bears and laying the groundwork for a new (presumably domed) stadium to be built for the NFL team, which clearly wants out of Soldier Field.
While Warren works on a stadium deal with the Bears — something he did in a previous job with the Minnesota Vikings — the Big Ten is already scrambling to adjust to USC’s move to the Big Ten.
Ohio State bailed out of a home-and-home football series with Washington in 2024 and 2025. The Huskies wanted to beef up their schedule. Now, they will pay a price for USC moving to the Big Ten and causing Ohio State to have concerns about too much travel within a given football season.
The man who set these forces in motion is no longer working in the Big Ten. He isn’t even working in college sports.
The “every man for himself” dynamic we see in college sports continues to remain firmly in evidence. It would be one thing if these movements really seemed like full communal agreements, but it seems clear that Ohio State is not happy with any of this. The Buckeyes and Kevin Warren did not get along very well when Warren was Big Ten commish. OSU’s decision to cancel the home-and-home with Washington feels almost like a protest of sorts.
This doesn’t make USC’s move worse, or somehow less acceptable. The Trojans needed the money and were not being served well by the Pac-12. However, it at least would have been nice if the man who made this huge deal was around to supervise the transition and live with the consequences of his actions.
Instead, Kevin Warren doesn’t have to face any of these aftershocks in the Big Ten. He parachuted in, closed the sale, and then got out of Dodge just as quickly as he arrived.
That’s not right … but it’s entirely the reality of college sports these days.
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