How Bears Will Transition From Ted Phillips to Kevin Warren

How Bears will transition from Phillips to Warren originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago

The Bears introduced Kevin Warren as their new president/CEO on Tuesday, but that doesn’t mean he’s already hit the ground running leading the organization. Now, Warren says he’s in “information download” mode. That means meeting up with both Ted Phillips and Ryan Poles to get up to speed with all the details on where the Bears stand in both business and football. The bulk of that work will begin next week.

Warren comes to the Bears from the Big Ten, where he worked as the conference commissioner. Just like the Bears will help Warren transition into the franchise as seamlessly as possible, Warren will do the same for his replacement. The Bears want to accommodate that as well, so Phillips agreed to push back his retirement while Warren onboards the next Big Ten Commissioner. Phillips previous end date was Feb. 28, but now he’ll stay on until Warren is ready to take the reins.

“There’s a lot going on, but he’s a high-energy guy who has an incredible work ethic,” Phillips said. “I’ve never met anyone that probably works as hard as he does.”

When Warren says he wants to download and digest information before starting work, he means it to. This won’t be a surface-level study session for Warren, he’s going to dig into the details of everything.

“I’m a lawyer by trade,” Warren said. “I’m a big believer of give me all the documents and let me go get in there. I’m one of those people, I go read the contracts because it’s amazing the number of times whether it’s at the Big Ten or at the Vikings where someone tells me something and then I say bring me the documents and then I go eh, not that it’s bad, it’s just a little bit different, so I’m looking forward to digging into the structure of the deal, what does it mean, the land, what’s there and just to get downloaded all that information.”

It could take months for Warren to be completely onboarded, or Warren may get all the information he needs sooner. That part is still unclear. In the meantime, Warren said he’s available to help however he can.

“I want to win a championship and they all want to do it,” Warren said. “And so as people have ideas, how can I help? Last couple years in the Big Ten, I’ve watched every Big Ten football game, a lot of them in person. What are things I can find out about players, what did I see, what did I notice – not only there but across the country. My son’s a college football player. But even just relationships, people in the league, a lot of the folks that I was in the league with were young in their career. Now, some of them are head coaches and scouts and GMs. This is an information business. So any way that we can work together and just put our heads together, make sure we make the right decisions. This is a very important year.”

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