Thursday, September 18, 2008
In a poll released by Time magazine, Kansas athletics director Lew Perkins has been named the top sports executive in the World.
Perkins was the only college administrator to make the final list of 35, which featured team owners, league commissioners and other sports executives.
Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of the Manchester United soccer team, finished second and John Henry, principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, finished third. Danny Ainge, general manager of the Boston Celtics, and Jerry Reese, general manager of the New York Giants, rounded out the top five.
“It is a great honor just to be included on this list,” Perkins said in a statement. “It is tremendously flattering to actually win it.”
Perkins, who arrived in Kansas in June 2003, has doubled the Athletics Department’s budget from $27 million to more than $55 million last year, according to Time magazine.
“I’m not a gambling person, but I would have bet the house that he was going to win,” women’s basketball coach Bonnie Henrickson said. “The success of the department speaks volumes to his leadership and his ability to make difficult decisions that in the short term might be unpopular but long term and over the long haul are good for the University and the Athletics Department.”
In addition to KU’s teams winning the national championship in basketball and the Orange Bowl in football, Perkins has overseen upgrades and expansion to several of the school’s athletic facilities, including The Booth Family Hall of Athletics, which opened in January of 2006 and celebrates the history and tradition of athletics at Kansas.
The baseball complex was upgraded as well and now includes a new scoreboard and indoor hitting facility, and will soon feature a new clubhouse.
The football team recently moved into a $31 million dollar complex near Memorial Stadium that features two practice fields.
Construction also has begun on a $38 million dollar project near Allen Fieldhouse that will build a state-of-the-art practice facility for the men’s and women’s basketball teams and provide upgrades to the fieldhouse.
“Sometimes what often gets lost in everything is the personal touch that he has,” Henrickson said. “Most people don’t get to see him on a daily basis. I get to see him around our athletes and in recruiting when we bring a young lady and her family into his office how warm and compassionate he is. He’s a big business guy but a bigger people person.”
The academics have also improved throughout the department since Perkins arrived. In the fall of 2007, 10 of the University’s 18 teams posted grade point averages of 3.0 or higher. Also, 229 students on active sports rosters, more than 51 percent of the total, posted individual GPAs above 3.0. The combined 2.93 GPA in the fall of 2007 was a KU athletics department record.
“This vote wasn’t just a reflection of me,” Perkins said. “Chancellor Hemenway, our faculty, our coaches and our student-athletes all play an important role in reaching our ultimate goal — unparalleled excellence.”
Perkins has signed football coach Mark Mangino and basketball coach Bill Self to long-term contracts and convinced Henrickson to leave Virginia Tech soon after she arrived in Lawrence.
Perkins came to Kansas from the University of Connecticut, where he was the athletic director from 1999 to 2003 and saw six Connecticut teams win national championships. He was the inaugural winner of the National Athletic Director of the Year Award as selected by Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal in 2000.
— — Edited by Arthur Hur
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Comments
Perkins nabs top spot in sports poll
...yet athletics still takes $80 from each student in mandatory fees.
Perkins nabs top spot in sports poll
when Lew is out on the field at Memorial stadium or on the court at Allen Fieldhouse is everyone booing him or saying Lew? I never got that, but both would make sense to me.
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