He sold and we bought. He spent money, made even more, spent even more, and promised one day we would make even more than that …

He is Lew Perkins. We are Connecticut. And suddenly he is saying goodbye.

These are scary times for UConn. The Big East could be in shambles. A wounded conference is cornered and so angry that it has taken the ACC to court down the street from Lew’s house.

He worked a decade to convince us that big-time football was the only path to the future of college athletics for our state university. Yet now with the present rocky and the future uncertain, he decided his own future is at Kansas University.

Congratulations on your new job, Lew.

An athletic director has to do what he has to do. If the deal is too ripe to turn down, a 58-year-old man has a responsibility to his wife and his family. He needs to look to his future.

All Lew has to do is smile and shake hands at the news conference today, and he’ll be embraced. But damn, Lew, the timing is lousy for Connecticut. With Miami, Syracuse and Boston College looking to bolt to the ACC, Connecticut could be stuck in Munchkinland while you’re in Kansas.

But, as you like to say, it’s nothing personal.

When the subject is Perkins, there is no need to preach altruism. Lew is business first. Lew is business last. Lew is business always. He is a big, giant man and his designs exceed his physical size.

He is a man with a plan. He is not about romance. With Lew, it’s first-class travel, four- and five-star hotels, $103 pitchers of orange juice and big games all over the country. With Lew bigger is better.

He didn’t bring the jewels to Connecticut. Calhoun did. Auriemma did. They already were hired before Perkins arrived. What Lew has done is make sure those jewels were on full display.

While he was here, UConn became a heavyweight and acted like one. He made the UConn athletic department bigger and better. Its expansion was exponential — the budget is 21¼2 times what it was in 1990 — and Lew made other schools in New England envious.

Football is his legacy. If another man had been named athletic director at Storrs, there is an awful good chance no $90 million stadium would be ready to open this August in East Hartford.

Lew had big dreams and big plans. And he was big enough to pull it off. Lew can bully. Lew can cajole. He can push hard. He can back off. He never gave up on the idea of big-time football.

Polls show that at no time did a majority of the state approve of a big-time football stadium, but he ultimately was able to convince the state legislature to build it.

He has the stomach for the big deal when others might not have had it. Lew is cordial and evasive in public. You always get the feeling that the backroom is where Lew works his magic. His department spent $1 million more than it brought in last year, but by the time he got finished talking, he’d have you saying, hey, it’s 74 percent self-sufficient now compared to 41 percent when he arrived.

Brushes with the law? Academic problems? Inflated ticket prices? Big-time donors? Well-heeled junkets? We aren’t Texas. We aren’t Nebraska. Connecticut remains queasy about the big-time nature of college sports, but Lew always seemed to make it smoother to swallow.

He was the expansionist. He was the imperialist. While other colleges in our region wilted, Lew was the Alexander The Great of jockdom.

The faith was in him. The faith was that his dogged pursuit and endless sales pitch about major college football. The faith was that he wasn’t pushing high-tech stock for his own ego, to put his own mark on an athletic department made famous by the basketball coaches.

And now his leadership and bullish optimism is needed most, he’s off to Kansas.

He left only because the next deal was better for him. He didn’t leave because the UConn ship could be sinking. Did he?