Former University of Connecticut athletic director Lew Perkins has retired as athletic director at the University of Kansas - earlier than he expected.
Perkins was a well known figure at the state Capitol when UConn was trying to upgrade its football program to Division 1-A and when it was trying to build Rentschler Field in East Hartford. The state Senate had rejected a move to build a football stadium on the campus in Storrs, but Perkins and others continued to push for a stadium through the years.
Then-Gov. John G. Rowland packaged the UConn stadium into a single vote with the Adriaen's Landing complex in Hartford because some of Rowland's advisors believed that the UConn stadium could not win in a stand-alone vote in the legislature - in the same way that it had failed in the original vote in the Senate for the campus stadium. When the Adriaen's Landing complex was approved, so was the stadium.