Welcome to a new episode of Land-Grant Holy Land’s I-70 podcast. On this show, we talk about all things Big Ten football and basketball. After every week of action, we will catch you up on all the conference’s games and look ahead at the matchups, storylines, and players you should be paying attention to next week. My name is Jordan Williams, and I am joined by my co-host Dante Morgan.

Happy Memorial Day from the I-70 Football Podcast! We hope you or someone in your family got on the grill and enjoyed some excellent food.

In this episode, Dante and Jordan discuss the retirement of Iowa’s athletic director Gary Barta and his checkered legacy at Iowa. Under Barta, the Hawkeyes won four national championships in wrestling and a bunch of Big Ten championships between Football, Wrestling, and Men’s and Women’s Basketball. Despite some success, Barta and Iowa have had to pay out $11 million from multiple lawsuits alleging racism, gender discrimination, and breaking Title IX laws. Recently Iowa had 26 players get suspended due to gambling, under Barta Iowa has been marred in controversy, they’ll now have a chance to move on and get it right with their next hire. 

Jordan regrets his decision to support Kevin Warren after discovering how badly he messed up the Big Ten’s media deal before leaving to be the President of the Chicago Bears. Warren, continuing his trend of under-communicating, promised NBC a night game package that included night games in November despite a handshake agreement from a previous regime that allowed Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and others to not play games at night. The new media deal elicited a negative response from football coaches due to the November night games and basketball coaches due to the number of games scheduled to stream on peacock.

Aside from coaches not being happy, there is $70 million worth of games up in the air due to schools not wanting to play at night. On top of potentially losing $70 million, the conference owes Fox $40 million because Warren gave up the rights to the 2026 Big Ten Championship game without their permission and another $25 million for lost revenue due to the pandemic. Overall Kevin Warren left a huge mess for the new commissioner to fix in his first month on the job.

Connect with us on Twitter:

Jordan: @JordanW330

Dante: @DanteM10216

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