A Model Of Success
Many of you have probably seen that I have added two new people to my senior staff this week – Richard Sweet and Jeff Konya. Richard will head up our marketing and brand building efforts and Jeff will handle compliance issues as we move towards our goal of being top-25 in all we do.
I will say that being able to hire someone like Richard away from a top company like Southwest Airlines says a lot about the commitment to athletics here at SMU. Adding someone with so much experience from such a successful company will be a huge boost to the redevelopment of the SMU brand.
As a side note, Richard is a great guy. He has tremendous business acumen, a true passion for SMU – having been a student-athlete here - and a pretty good sense of humor. Check out his blog from the Southwest Airline site here. Hopefully, his sense of humor will carry over after I post these then and now photos...
Richard’s hire is also another step in our efforts to improve the business enterprise of the department. We still have a few more positions left to fill, but I think that you will see commitment to a model that will allow us to make the most of our resources, to increase revenue, and to make our program more attractive to our students, alumni and the broader community.
From an internal standpoint, having a top compliance person is imperative. With an NCAA manual that’s 700-plus pages thick, running a compliance office can be a bit tedious, but we are committed to winning with integrity and Jeff is a great guy who I know is up to the task. He is well-respected in the field and is great at his job. He’s so well-liked at Memphis that, when he announced his resignation, John Calipari and Tommy West went to their University president and asked him to find a way to keep Jeff. He will truly be an asset for SMU. And like Richard, Jeff is a former student-athlete, having played football at Princeton. Now if I can just get Princeton to send me an action photo...
On the field, as I stressed on Monday, it’s VERY important that you get out to the game Saturday. The DMN had an article on our bowl and conference championship chances yesterday, noting that if we can win out, we’ll be in the C-USA Championship game.
Let’s get it done – on the field and in the stands. Buy your tickets here.
Many of you have probably seen that I have added two new people to my senior staff this week – Richard Sweet and Jeff Konya. Richard will head up our marketing and brand building efforts and Jeff will handle compliance issues as we move towards our goal of being top-25 in all we do.
I will say that being able to hire someone like Richard away from a top company like Southwest Airlines says a lot about the commitment to athletics here at SMU. Adding someone with so much experience from such a successful company will be a huge boost to the redevelopment of the SMU brand.
As a side note, Richard is a great guy. He has tremendous business acumen, a true passion for SMU – having been a student-athlete here - and a pretty good sense of humor. Check out his blog from the Southwest Airline site here. Hopefully, his sense of humor will carry over after I post these then and now photos...
Richard’s hire is also another step in our efforts to improve the business enterprise of the department. We still have a few more positions left to fill, but I think that you will see commitment to a model that will allow us to make the most of our resources, to increase revenue, and to make our program more attractive to our students, alumni and the broader community.
From an internal standpoint, having a top compliance person is imperative. With an NCAA manual that’s 700-plus pages thick, running a compliance office can be a bit tedious, but we are committed to winning with integrity and Jeff is a great guy who I know is up to the task. He is well-respected in the field and is great at his job. He’s so well-liked at Memphis that, when he announced his resignation, John Calipari and Tommy West went to their University president and asked him to find a way to keep Jeff. He will truly be an asset for SMU. And like Richard, Jeff is a former student-athlete, having played football at Princeton. Now if I can just get Princeton to send me an action photo...
On the field, as I stressed on Monday, it’s VERY important that you get out to the game Saturday. The DMN had an article on our bowl and conference championship chances yesterday, noting that if we can win out, we’ll be in the C-USA Championship game.
Let’s get it done – on the field and in the stands. Buy your tickets here.
posted by SMU Athletics at 1:50 PM
1 Comments:
Mr. Orsini, this is great to have this information about our athletic programs. I Love it.
As a minor suggestion how about making the dotted lines between each days post a little darker and making the date a little more pronounced. I am a mustang backer so keep up the good work. Thanks,
Nelson Ashwander
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