College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-America Team

Grand Canyon University, Class of 1986
• 1986 Men's Basketball Second Team Academic All-America®
 

Warren began his collegiate career at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the Quakers’ Ivy League championship basketball team in 1982. He transferred to Grand Canyon University and scored 1,118 career points at GCU, an average of 20.0 points per game. He earned CSC Academic All-American honors as a senior along with NAIA academic honors as both a junior and senior. He is one of 25 members of the program's 1,000-point club and was inducted into the GCU Athletics Hall of Fame in March of 2012.

Warren graduated in 1986 with bachelor’s degree in business administration and went on to earn an MBA from Arizona State University in 1988 and a law degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1990. He spent 21 seasons in the NFL, including 15 with the Minnesota Vikings where he served as the chief operating officer, the highest-ranking Black executive working on the business side for a team in the NFL and the first Black COO in NFL history. He also worked in the front offices of the Detroit Lions and the St. Louis Rams, where he was a member of the 1999 Super Bowl winning team.

Warren was named commissioner of the Big Ten Conference in 2019. During his tenure, he led negotiations for groundbreaking media rights deals, helped spearhead the addition of UCLA and USC to the Big Ten Conference, established the Big Ten Mental Health and Wellness Cabinet and was a leader throughout the college sports landscape during the pandemic in the area of social justice.

In January 2023, Warren was named the president and CEO of the Chicago Bears.

In 2012, the Warren family “adopted” Lucy Craft Laney Community School in Minneapolis, by donating over 900 backpacks to students. The Warrens created Carolyn’s Comforts in 2014 in conjunction with the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital and have donated $1 million to a pediatric emergency care fund, to honor the legacy of his sister Carolyn Elaine Warren-Knox who passed away of brain cancer. In 2017, the Warrens launched “No Doors Closed,” a scholarship program selecting high school students from District 191, who will be first-generation college students. The Warrens also started The Warren Family Foundation in 2019. The nonprofit foundation is organized and operated exclusively for charitable purposes of educational, literacy, religious, and scientific-medical.
       

 

Updated June 2023