Lucky 13: KU taps Perkins

UConn administrator among nation's 'top athletic directors'

Clearly tired of Kansas University’s second-class status in the Big 12 Conference, Chancellor Robert Hemenway introduced Lew Perkins as the Jayhawks’ 13th athletic director Tuesday afternoon.

“I think one thing it signifies,” Hemenway said of Perkins’ hiring, “is we’re not happy, and we don’t want to be in the bottom quarter of the Big 12 Conference.”

Perkins, 58, ranks in the upper strata of the nation’s college athletic directors. He’s been in the business for 35 years, including the last 13 at Connecticut. In 2000, Perkins was named the National Athletic Director of the Year.

“Why would I leave Connecticut?” Perkins said during Tuesday’s media session at Parrott Athletic Complex. “To be perfectly honest, when I met the chancellor, I knew I wanted to work with him. I’m excited about working with the chancellor and with the University of Kansas.”

Perkins has to be excited, too, about feathering his nest. According to Hemenway, Perkins will receive a six-year contract at $400,000 a year. In addition, Perkins will receive an annuity for an undetermined figure, but almost certainly in six figures.

“That probably positions us in the upper half of the Big 12,” Hemenway said, referring to AD compensation in the league.

Perkins’ salary at UConn was about $273,000 a year. The salary of Al Bohl, the man Perkins replaces at KU, was $255,000 a year, and Bohl was the highest-paid employee on the Lawrence campus.

Hemenway said the funds for Perkins’ salary would come mostly from athletic department coffers.

“There is a part of the salary paid by state funds,” Hemenway said, “but it’s not a large part.”

Perkins also had a $200,000 buyout clause in his UConn pact, but Hemenway said that item hadn’t been discussed.

Upper echelon

In the two months since Bohl was fired, Hemenway and interim AD Drue Jennings had discussions with about 25 candidates and, according to Hemenway, had serious interviews with about a dozen of them.

Through it all, the chancellor said, “it became clearer and clearer we had a chance to hire one of the top athletic directors in the country.”

Perkins is without question in the top echelon. The success of UConn’s men’s and women’s basketball programs is well documented, and Perkins propelled the school into NCAA Div. I-A football. Less well known is that, under Perkins, UConn added three varsity sports at a time when many schools, including Kansas, were dropping them.

It has been speculated Perkins left UConn in large part because the Huskies could be left high and dry if the Atlantic Coast Conference steals three Big East schools in an expansion project.

Perkins denied UConn’s potential for no-man’s-land status in football was a factor.

“I know there are doubters, but that had nothing to do with it,” he said. “People who know me know I don’t back away from a fight.”

Perkins hinted the bottom line was simply that it was “time for someone else to come in to Connecticut” and that Kansas was one of “probably three or five places I’d look at.”

“There are not a lot of opportunities in our profession,” Perkins added. “I’ve had other opportunities and made the decision not to go.”

Attitude adjustment

Perkins, who plans to take over in early July, stressed he was committed to restoring swagger to Kansas University athletics, the cockiness he remembered Kansas had when he was AD at Wichita State from 1983-87.

“When I was at Wichita State, we hated KU,” Perkins said, “but we hated them out of respect. I hope we can get that attitude back to where people are positively negative about us.”

Men’s basketball was the only KU varsity sport that captured a Big 12 Conference championship during the 2002-’03 school year. No other men’s team finished higher than eighth in league races. Among the women, no team finished higher than fourth.

“We have to do a better job,” Perkins said. “We have to get that swagger back. I look at Kansas as one of the great universities in the country.”

Asked if Mount Oread would be his last stop, Perkins replied, “I hope so.”

Then he quipped: “But the chancellor might decide he doesn’t like bald-headed guys.”