After a two-month search, Kansas University officials formally announced Lew Perkins as KU’s new athletic director Tuesday afternoon.
Perkins, who had been the head of the athletics department of the University of Connecticut for 13 years, was introduced at a 45-minute news conference in Hadl Auditorium on KU’s main campus.
Showing a jovial personality during the event, Perkins said he wanted KU’s athletics programs to recapture the confidence they once had when he was AD at Wichita State during the mid 1980s.
“I think the University of Kansas has lost its swagger,” Perkins said. “. . . I hope that during my tenure we can resolve that and get that kind of attitude back and get people who are positively negative . . . We want to develop that swagger and confidence. Some people will say that’s arrogance. That’s OK. There’s nothing wrong with being arrogant. It’s positive.”
Perkins said Kansas was one of three or four schools where he would have considered taking a similar job. The job offer from Kansas came “totally unexpected.”
“I wasn’t even thinking about it,” he said. “But obviously, we had to investigate it. Everything that I found led me to believe this was the place where I wanted to be, my family wanted to be . . . My experience at Connecticut was probably 13 of the most full years that I could ever have. And I hope the next 13 years that I spend here will be as — And I don’t have a 13-year contract — I hope they will be close to my experiences (at UConn).”
The new AD was asked if he was trying to get away from the trouble that UConn is now having. He had been trying to build UConn into an NCAA Division I-A football power, but that seems unlikely because UConn is about to be left without a major conference affiliation.
“People who know me know I don’t walk away from a battle,” Perkins said, explaining he had to take advantage of the Kansas offer because of the timing and “there’s not a lot of opportunities in our profession.”
Perkins replaced interim AD Drue Jennings and thanked Jennings for the job he had done since Al Bohl’s firing April 9.
“My first job is to convince him to stay on with me for a couple of months with me and help me through the transition,” Perkins said.
  Photo Gallery Lew Perkins’ opening statements See the official KU news release.Washington ‘thrilled’ with Perkins.Transcript of Lew Perkins’ press conference. |
He praised both new KU basketball coach Bill Self and football coach Mark Mangino.
“Mark hasn’t made his mark yet, but he is going to make his mark. He is going to be a terrific coach here,” Perkins said.
Perkins, who brought UConn’s football program to Division I-A status during his tenure, said at Kansas, “we’re not going to take any shortcuts.”
“If it means going through a couple of difficult years together, we’re going to do that,” he said, adding that “there hasn’t been a lot of strategic planning” in the athletic department.
He also indicated he would put emphasis on building the KU women’s basketball program.
“I am probably the strongest supporter of women’s basketball in the country,” he said. “Women’s basketball has to be a revenue sport here.”
Perkins pointed to his track record when asked if he would work to improve funding for KU’s athletics programs.
“I can only speak from experience. When I took the job in 1990 at Connecticut, our budget was . . . about seven or eight million dollars, and today it’s 40 million dollars,” he said. “It’s about 70 to 75 percent self-sufficient.”
KU needs to do a better job at increasing its budget, he said.
“One of the jobs I have in Kansas is to help educate the people of Kansas, the alums, that football is very important,” he said. “We said the same thing in Connecticut, that you run out of revenue sources after awhile. You can’t sell any more basketball tickets. You have to look for other revenue. And football is obviously the place where you can generate a lot more revenue.”
He said the true Jayhawk fan will have to realize that support is needed for all the programs.
Perkins, who was joined by his wife, Gwen, at the press conference, also thanked KU’s Chancellor Robert Hemenway, whom Perkins called a “man of integrity.”
“Lew Perkins is highly regarded nationally, and has had a positive impact everywhere he’s served,” Hemenway said in prepared remarks. “He is known for his integrity, his support of women’s athletics and his ability to help build champions. All of those qualities are valued at KU, so he stood out for me as an ideal candidate.”
