Pete Najarian has been identified as a leading candidate for the open Univ. of Minnesota AD position, and the CNBC contributor and optionMONSTER.com co-Founder called the job a "great opportunity." The UM alum, speaking to KMSP-Fox, said, "I see what a great community we live in here in Minnesota, and I look at the university as a great university. I look at all of the opportunities that are there: Why we can be great, should be great. We’re not great right now. ... There are ways to get ourselves back into the community and ways to get the sports community excited about Gopher football, Gopher basketball, Gopher hockey, men’s, women’s -- all of our sports. We really do have a lot here. I think it’s a jewel and people just don’t understand it.” Najarian has been involved in the financial world for the better part of 20 years, and he said, "Why not combine what I think are my two best assets right now, combining the financial world with the sports world? That’s what an athletic director does, and I think that there are things that we have not done at the University of Minnesota that we could do that really can put us in a position to be competing with Michigan and Ohio State every single year." Najarian also addressed the fundraising aspect of the AD position, saying the new hire needs to understand the "business climate" around the region and get locally-based Fortune 500 companies "to embrace the University of Minnesota." He said, "There is no reason in the world why 3M doesn’t want to be involved with the University of Minnesota. I look at Honeywell, I look at Best Buy, I look across at all these various companies that are here -- and some of them just have a large presence here -- but get to those folks, Target, all the rest of them, U.S. Bank, all the financial world, TCF, obviously. ... There are so many different areas that I think we haven’t tapped and if we’ve tapped, we have not tapped hard enough to get them to be a part of Gopher athletics” ("Fox 9 Sports Now," KMSP-Fox, 5/8).
LEADERS IN THE CLUBHOUSE: In St. Paul, Charley Walters reported the "front-runners" for the UM job are current interim AD Beth Goetz, Penn State Deputy AD & COO Phil Esten and Northern Illinois AD Sean Frazier (ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS, 5/8).
