The 2021 NCAA women’s basketball national championship was the first for Warren after sports shut down 70 days into his tenure as the commissioner. “But also don’t go into it from a judgmental standpoint.” “Don’t go into it saying, ‘Well, here is how they did it before so let’s just keep doing it,’” Warren told Yahoo Sports. “This is a critical component.”Īnd the conference established the Lisa Byington Award for the glass-shattering play-by-play announcer to honor the past and future of women in sport. “This hire will be one of the most important hires that I'll make in my tenure as commissioner of the Big Ten Conference,” he said. The Big Ten is in the process of hiring a vice president of women’s basketball who will report directly to the conference’s new chief sports officer, Warren told Yahoo Sports exclusively.
It’s only the beginning of his plans as the sport and NCAA reckons with the fallout of its long-held inequities put on blast at the 2021 women’s basketball championship. “I have this vision that our women’s coaches and men’s coaches deserve an opportunity and a platform to hear their voices, their stories, their programs, to have those amplified ,” Warren told Yahoo Sports on a Zoom call earlier this week. That’s why Warren insisted on these combined media days that alternate between men’s and women’s programs rather than split them, and fans' attention, as had been done in the past.
