Color of Hockey: Warren helping Big Ten raise profile

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog for the past nine years. Douglas joined NHL.com in March 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren.

Kevin Warren said he wanted to lean into hockey after he became commissioner of the Big Ten in January 2020, to raise its profile in an athletic conference known more nationally for football and basketball.
He said he reaches back to his experience as a hockey dad who spent endless hours at rinks and driving his son, Powers, to tournaments to help guide him.
"His love of hockey and him playing really helped my transition as commissioner here much more smoothly, especially from a hockey standpoint," Warren said. "The thing I really learned to enjoy was the time it afforded our family to spend together because we had tournaments on weekends that we were able to drive to in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota."
Warren, the first Black person to head one of college sports' Power Five conferences, said those moments fuel his drive to elevate hockey within the Big Ten and make it the most dominant among the five NCAA Division I hockey conferences.
Big Ten hockey, played by Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State and Wisconsin, already made its impact felt at the 2021 NHL Draft.
Five Michigan players were selected in the first round, including the No. 1 pick, defenseman
Owen Power
, by the Buffalo Sabres.
Center
Matty Beniers
was selected No. 2 by the Seattle Kraken; defenseman
Luke Hughes
, a former USA Hockey National Team Development Program Under-18 player, was chosen No. 4 by the New Jersey Devils; center
Kent Johnson
went at No. 5 to the Columbus Blue Jackets; and forward
Mackie Samoskevich
, who played for Chicago of the United States Hockey League last season, was chosen at No. 24 by the Florida Panthers.
Chaz Lucius
, a former NTDP center selected No. 18 by the Winnipeg Jets, is playing at Minnesota.
Corson Ceulemans
, a former defenseman for Brooks of the Alberta Junior Hockey League selected No. 25 by the Blue Jackets, is at Wisconsin.
Warren said he wants to see Big Ten hockey get even bigger.
"Hopefully as we have our problems with the pandemic under control, we can start exploring ... some of our participant schools evaluating growing hockey further in the Big Ten, what's the right mixture of affiliate memberships, is there a way to expand?" he said. "Just always constantly thinking of ways that we can make our conference stronger from a hockey standpoint, and also college hockey in general."

Warren, a native of Arizona, comes from a basketball and football background. He played basketball at Pennsylvania and then at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, where he scored 1,118 career points, and spent more than 21 seasons working for National Football League teams.
He got acquainted with hockey when working for the Detroit Lions and the then-St. Louis Rams, NFL teams with NHL franchises in their cities.
"I had known some about it, and watched it," Warren said. "I was also an admirer of Willie O'Ree and what he had meant as a Black man, the impact he had on making a difference in diversity, equity and inclusion. As a matter of fact, in my home gym in Minnesota I have a poster hanging ... I have a Jackie Robinson poster, a Willie O'Ree poster, I have a Michael Jordan poster."
Warren became immersed in hockey during 15 years working for the Minnesota Vikings, with whom he rose to become the first Black chief operating officer in NFL history.
Warren's then-5-year-old son attended a birthday party at a rink and quickly got hooked on skating and hockey.
"They put on some skates and they gave him a chair to hold onto on the ice," the elder Warren said. "He came home ecstatic. He said, 'Mom, dad, I had the greatest time, I was able to skate, it was so much fun. I want to play hockey.'"
Warren's wife, Greta, signed Powers up for a team and his parents watched him quickly progress in the sport.
Powers attended a hockey camp at Michigan run by then-Michigan coach and former NHL center Red Berenson. Kevin Warren thought Powers was destined to play college hockey, but he decided to focus on football when he was entering his junior year of high school.
"To this day, I say hockey is my favorite sport to play," said Powers Warren, now a tight end at Michigan State. "I love football with all my might now ... but hockey, for sure, was my first love in sports."

Powers Warren's Michigan hockey camp experience left a lasting impression on his father, who remembers watching from the Yost Ice Arena stands when Berenson ran his son and the other campers through drills.
Warren reached out to Berenson and hired him as a special adviser to the commissioner for hockey operations in May 2020.
Berenson, a 2018 United States Hockey Hall of Fame inductee, went 848-426 with 92 ties in 33 seasons as Michigan coach before retiring in 2017. He played in the NHL All-Star Game six times and scored 658 points (261 goals, 397 assists) in 987 games with the Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues and Detroit Red Wings, won the Stanley Cup with the Canadiens in 1965 and was 100-72 with 32 ties as Blues coach from 1979-82.
"To have someone like that in my corner, in the corner of the conference, who was not only a great player but a great coach and leader, who is a Big Ten and NHL icon, is fabulous," Warren said.

Berenson said he wasn't looking for a job when Warren came calling, but he liked what he heard from the new commissioner.
"He had a soft spot for hockey, and he realized real quick that the Big Ten hockey conference needed to be better," Berenson said. "A lot of us, people who have been around the Big Ten, feel the same way."
Berenson credits Warren with helping make hockey more appealing to viewers of the Big Ten Network, the conference's sports channel, by shortening intermissions between periods from about 18 minutes to 12 and by cutting the number of commercials.
Big Ten hockey games averaged 51,829 viewers per game in 2020-21, a 55-percent increase from 2019-20 and its best season since 2016-17, according to network communications director Patrick Kenny.
A Minnesota-Ohio State game on Jan. 30 attracted 164,864 viewers, making it the most watched men's hockey game on the network to date, Kenny said.
"When you watch a college hockey game now, its continuous action," Berenson said. "Now we're down to a two-hour game. It's kept our fans glued to the channel. It's been a win-win for fans and the Big Ten Network."

Berenson said Warren also was instrumental in getting Arizona State to play 28 road games against Big Ten teams last season. The arrangement helped independent Arizona State and Big Ten schools fill out their schedules, which were impacted by COVID-19.
Having Big Ten teams face Arizona State was special for Warren, who earned a master's degree there in 1988.
"I was excited, they're a great hockey program," he said. "And to have come from the place where I grew up, I really enjoyed that."