Konya dig it, NU?
New AD wants good to become great
Northeastern University’s new athletic director, Jeff Konya, sounds very much like a man who plans to bring a new-age outlook to a Huskies program rich in old-school tenets.
“Why Northeastern? My first response is the DNA of the university here,” Konya said yesterday. “Over the past 20 years, its meteoric rise in the (national) rankings, its growth and the selectivity of its students. It’s a forward-moving organization. I feel that athletics can emulate the meteoric rise of the university. I feel that same DNA can replicate itself in athletics at the university.”
Konya, who grew up in West Bloomfield, Mich., arrives at NU from Oakland University in Michigan, where he served as AD since 2014. Under his watch, the Golden Grizzlies earned the Horizon League’s McCafferty Trophy, emblematic of the league’s all-sports champion, each of the last three school years. Oakland studentathletes also posted a collective 3.30 grade-point average in 2017.
In a 15-minute introductory speech to a gathering of students, professors, administrators and athletic department personnel inside the main lobby of NU’s sparkling new Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex, the 44-year-old Konya described himself as a “collaborative individual,” an “out-of-the-box thinker” and a “strategic planner.”
Without alluding to any specific goals or timetables, Konya said he is adamant about pursuing an upwardly mobile path and will look to promote the NU corporate/athletics brand.
Konya pointed to the university’s co-operative education program as a key asset.
“I want to go from good to great,” he said. “People make places. We want to attract the highest quality student-athletes. We want to attract the best of the best. I want to do my very best to be transparent. We’re going to do it first class or we’re not going to do it. It’s a whole lot more fun when you win, and it’s going to be fun. So, without further adieu, let’s get going.”
Asked later whether the matter of reinstituting varsity football is on the radar, Konya, who played the sport at Princeton, said, “Everything is probably a little premature, at this point. But, I will say, it’s very, very difficult in this environment.”
Konya, who attended his first Northeastern varsity sporting event Tuesday night when the women’s hockey team beat UConn at Matthews Arena, will assume his new position on Feb. 1. He will succeed retiring AD Peter Roby, who was in attendance yesterday.
“I would say that Jeff really embraces the notion of academic success and athletic success,” Roby said. “The people who are already here at Northeastern really believe in that and I know that Jeff does, too. I think it’s the perfect time for the athletic department to receive an infusion of new energy and new ideas.”
Konya was the athletic director at Cal State Bakersfield before moving on to Oakland. He has also worked in athletic administration at Iowa, South Dakota, Bucknell, Texas-San Antonio, Memphis, SMU and Northeastern State.
‘We want to attract the best of the best . . . . We’re going to do it first class or we’re not going to do it.’
— JEFF KONYA New Northeastern athletic director