A torrent of public criticism was directed at Kevin Warren following the decision to suspend the season. Whether he represented the majority of fans, or just the loudest, Warren was an easy target: an inexperienced commissioner, new to college football, who presided over the shutdown of one of the most visible bastions in Midwestern tradition. No football season meant the cancellation of rivalry games, such as the Little Brown Jug (Michigan against Minnesota) and the Old Oaken Bucket (Indiana against Purdue), which had been played for a century or more.
In reality, of course, Warren didn’t cancel anything – he didn’t have that authority. But the presidents kept their vote details confidential, probably because no one wanted to be registered against football. As a result, speculation persisted that Warren made a unilateral decision. Nor did it go unnoticed that his son, Powers Warren, played wide receiver at Mississippi State, a Southeastern Conference university that would soon begin its season. “It is not ironic,” said Fox Sports radio personality Clay Travis, “that the son of the Big Ten commissioner himself has the opportunity to decide whether or not he wants to play college football, and that this is a decision that is not,” as he said, given to the top ten athletes to talk about their autumn sports.
Echoing the fans and columnists were coaches, players and parents. At a video news conference the day after the decision was announced, Ryan Day, Ohio State’s top football coach, struggled to contain his emotion. As with other programs across the county, Day and his athletes had devoted long hours to preparing for a season in difficult circumstances, paying strict attention to the Covid-19 protocol that included bathing in their rooms and avoiding any unnecessary social contact. . Suddenly, that season had been swept under them. “You don’t just wake up the next morning and it’s okay,” said Day. “It’s not okay. It’s devastating. ”Fields, the Ohio state quarterback, posted an online petition requesting an immediate resumption of the 2020 conference schedule. The next day, he had 250,000 signatures. Eight football players from Nebraska filed a lawsuit against the Big Ten, criticizing the process by which the season was postponed as “flawed and ambiguous”. A group calling itself Big 10 Parents United published an open letter addressed to Warren expressing “a total lack of confidence” in his leadership. Warren’s response to the criticisms emphasized that the conference presidents had voted and that the result was “overwhelmingly in favor of postponing autumn sports”. The vote, he insisted, would not be revisited.
On the last day of August, Timothy Pataki, aide to President Trump, called Warren on his cell phone. The president wanted to speak to him the next morning, Pataki said. There was little doubt what he meant. “It’s a shame that Big Ten isn’t playing football,” Trump tweeted two days earlier. “Let them PLAY.” After Pataki’s call, Warren prepared for his conversation with the president. “Keep an open mind,” said his wife, Greta.
Trump’s motivation was easy to decipher. There was a good chance that the next election would be decided in the heart of the Big Ten; Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, each with at least one conference member, were considered undecided states. If Trump could persuade the Big Ten to play a football season, or even appear to that end, their electoral prospects would likely benefit. He didn’t say a word about Pac-12, which also decided to postpone its season. But California, Oregon and Washington, where this conference is centered, are all blue.
On the morning of September 1, when the number of confirmed coronavirus cases across America exceeded six million, the White House called Warren and put Trump on the line. The conversation lasted 15 minutes. Trump offered to give any help he could to resurrect the Big Ten season. Warren replied that he would be in touch if he needed anything. “In the line of a yard!” Trump tweeted later that morning.
They were not so close. But despite Warren’s insistence that the decision was final, the position of the conference had indeed begun to change. In the days following the season-ending vote, Warren created a Return to Competition Task Force, which included subcommittees devoted to medical, programming and television issues. That put presidents like Samuel Stanley of Michigan, an infectious disease specialist, on the same links with sports directors and doctors. (In retrospect, Warren admits, this was probably something he should have done months earlier.) The task force was created to help steer the conference toward deciding whether to play the 2020 football season eventually – perhaps starting in January. or in the spring, when the championships of most other intercollegiate sports, those promoted by the NCAA, were played.