Skip to content

Ad Disclosure

Attorney Tom Mars says he’s on the verge of coordinating massive information request that led to B1G decision on football

Dustin Schutte

By Dustin Schutte

Published:

Tom Mars isn’t messing around with the B1G any longer. The prominent attorney that has long been associated with college athletics is calling on the conference to provide some transparency behind the decision to cancel fall football, or he’ll be applying a little pressure.

Speaking on SiriusXM Radio with Jon Jansen on Monday, Mars discussed the B1G’s decision to postpone the college football season this fall. His primary focus has been on the lack of reasoning, communication and transparency in the conference’s decision.

And if the B1G and commissioner Kevin Warren believes they can continue to hide, Mars says they better think of a new plan.

“I’m not sure the B1G knows this but, one way or the other, the players and the parents are going to get their hands on at least most of the information that was available to the B1G when they voted on this decision. If they did vote. Maybe they didn’t,” Mars said. “And people may wonder ‘How are they going to do that?’ It’s not only simple, it’s the next step in the process. And I’m actually on the verge of coordinating a massive request for emails, text messages, presentations and financial analysis from all member institutions of the B1G, and they’ll be required to produce those by the Freedom of Information statute.”

The B1G made the decision to pull the plug on all fall sports for 2020 last Tuesday, the first Power 5 league to do so. However, when the conference made the decision, there was not much explanation from Warren and presidents of the institutions have stayed fairly quiet on the matter.

It’s created quite a mess which has led parents of football players from five schools — Iowa, Ohio State, Penn State, Nebraska and Michigan — to send letters to the B1G office. It also prompted Buckeyes quarterback Justin Fields to launch a petition, calling for the league to reverse its decision on football. That has already collected 250,000 signatures.

Mars says most of this could’ve been avoided if Warren and the B1G would have just provided the information up front.

“Why wouldn’t the commissioner proactively release that information and explain it and put it in context,” Mars argued. “In my view, the longer Kevin Warren resists calls for transparency the more likely it is that he’s gonna have a very short tenure as [B1G] commissioner.”

Below is the clip shared by College Sports on SiriusXM.

Dustin Schutte

Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB