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The Minnesota Vikings chief operating officer, Kevin Warren, is expected to be presented Tuesday as the next Big Ten conference commissioner, confirmed sources, ESPN.
Warren informed the Vikings that he was planning to take the post, and he was in Chicago on Monday, ready for Tuesday's press conference, sources said.
Warren, 55, would become the first black commissioner of a Power 5 conference. He would replace Jim Delany, longtime commissioner of the Big Ten, who announced in March his intention to retire in 2020 after 30 years spent in the league.
In March, the Sun Belt Conference hired former Assistant Executive Commissioner of the Atlantic 10, Keith Gill, who became the first black commissioner at a conference on the Subdivisions of Football Bowl.
Big Ten officials are expected to announce the replacement of Delany at noon ET on Tuesday. 670 The show Mully & Haugh Show Score was the first to report the rental.
The presidents and chancellors of the Big Ten held their annual meeting on Sunday and it is believed that they approved the hiring of Delany's successor. Warren spent 21 seasons in the NFL, including 14 with the Vikings. He is the top black executive working on the business side of an NFL franchise.
In 2015, Warren was promoted to the position of Vice President of Legal Affairs and Head of Administration as the Vikings Chief Operating Officer. He played a key role in the development of the $ 1.1 billion American Bank stadium in Minneapolis, which opened in 2016 and hosted the Super Bowl LII in February 2018. He was a candidate for the presidency of the Oakland Raiders in 2014.
In 2013, Warren was named a member of the NFL's Workplace Diversity Committee. As director of Vikings' operations, he made the promotion of women a top priority, with four of them moving into management positions. In 2017, Kelly Kleine was appointed Viking Screening Coordinator.
Before joining the Vikings, Warren worked for the international law firm Greenberg Traurig. He spent two seasons with the Detroit Lions as Executive Vice President of Business Operations and General Counsel from 2001 to 2003 and Vice President of Player Programs and Legal Counsel for the St. Louis Rams from 1997 to 2001.
A native of Tempe, Arizona, Warren played basketball at Penn and Grand Canyon University, where he earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1986. He holds an MBA from Arizona State University and from a doctorate in law from the Notre Dame School of Law.
He was working in a law firm with the late SEC commissioner, Mike Slive, and renowned sports lawyer Mike Glazier, specializing in representing unreported NCAA universities.
During his law studies at Notre Dame, he founded Kevin Warren and Associates and represented athletes and professional artists. Irish defensive lineman Chris Zorich was Warren's first client. He has represented NFL players Will Shields and Lake Dawson.
Warren's father, the late Dr. Morrison Warren Sr., played professional football for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948. His father became the first black president of a major college football game when he was appointed chairman of the Fiesta Bowl Board of Directors in 1982.
His older brother, Morrison Warren Jr., was one of the first black stock market players at Stanford in the early 1960s.
"I had the chance to grow up in a pioneer family," said Warren at The Undefeated in January 2017. "My parents, my grandparents, have always been kind of pioneers to them."
At the age of 12, Warren was struck by a car while he was cycling. He fractured the femur and was forced to undergo a cast for six months. When the doctors told him that he might not be able to play sports, he asked him what he could do to promote his recovery. His doctors told him to swim.
His parents' house in Phoenix did not have a pool and they could not afford to build it. Warren therefore used the $ 30,000 insurance settlement he had received from the driver of the car to build one.
"I'm not supposed to be here," Warren told the Sports Business Journal in February. "I am so grateful that as a young child, I realized how fragile life is and how much it really is a gift." I should have died. class should have gone to a funeral to say: "he was a nice boy, good athlete, good student and honest, but life was cut short." That should have been the story of Kevin Fulbright Warren, but that was not the case. "
Warren and his wife, Greta, have a daughter, Peri, and a son, Powers, who plays football in the state of Mississippi.
Adam Rittenberg of ESPN contributed to this report
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