Dannen Comes to the Huskies With a Childhood Love of the Sonics

Amid the colorful flower arrangements, the Husky pep band serenading him and donors, staffers and media members all leaning in for a close look, Troy Dannen strode into the Coniber Shellhouse on Tuesday and was introduced as the new University of Washington athletic director.

In stepped a buttoned-down man in a charcoal suit whose relaxed manner and recent track record at Tulane helped get him hired.

Dannen, in turn, introduced his family and spoke about his commitment to winning, mentioning that he would make sure Kalen DeBoer had access to all of the necessary resources to keep the Husky football momentum going.

President Ana Mari Cauce shared what the school liked about him while Dannen said he wasn't necessarily looking to leave his job in New Orleans but he had researched this one and wanted it.

Later, while meeting alone with reporters, Dannen, 57, spoke about growing up as a young kid from Marshalltown, Iowa, a town of 27,000 northeast of Des Moines, where he developed a love for sports that initially came with a strong Seattle connection.

"My first recollection of names and athletes was my parents talking about Freddie Brown," he said of the University of Iowa basketball standout who became the popular franchise player for the then Seattle SuperSonics.

Seattle's NBA team continued to hold his interest as he became older.

"We watched TV and the Sonics were hot," Dannen said. "When I really started to pick up on it, it was Jack Sikma. He was the personification of a great player. Sikma, right? I don't know him as a player. You may know him. But this is very cool. Shawn Kemp followed him. I became a huge Shawn Kemp fan."

Yet this wasn't just an infatuation with a number of pro basketball greats for him. There was much more to it than that.

"I wasn't a big NBA fan, I was a Sonics fan," Dannen said, "because of the people, the players, as I was growing up."

There is yet even more to this story for this impressionable Iowa native who was now a middle-aged man and the athletic director for Northern Iowa, his alma mater, when he went down memory lane again.

In 2015, a 30-3 Panthers basketball team traveled to Seattle and KeyArena to play the opening rounds of the NCAA Tournament, splitting a pair of games with Wyoming and Louisville.

Dannen was beside him walking around the one-time basketball home for the Sonics, a place that had housed Freddie Brown, Jack Sikma and Shawn Kemp, that connected in a resonant fashion with this Midwest athletic director who would soon leave for Tulane.

"I remember being in that arena and all these Sonics memories came back," he said. "This is where the Sonics played."

Dannen was the kid who became totally enamored with sports as a young boy, a young boy in Middle America who just happened to make this Seattle connection, and he uses that experience to guide him through his career, which has taken him to Seattle, of all places.

"Now the tie to all this is the impact to how you build a fan base," he said. "You get the kids engaged, right? Young kids. What's going on right now is you can affect kids for life by being a part of this. They're going to remember Michael Penix. They're going to remember things that happened at this stage forever."

Rather than all of those people on Tuesday welcoming Dannen to Seattle, more accurately it was welcome back.

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