Minium: Ken Brown Guided ODU's Athletics Finances Through Good Times and Bad

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. – It was my first retreat with Old Dominion’s senior athletics staff and my most vivid memory from that day six years ago was an emphatic outburst from Ken Brown, ODU’s long-time deputy director of athletics.  

For much of an afternoon, about 20 senior-staff members brainstormed about ideas for improving ODU’s athletics program. There was no shortage of good suggestions.

Brown’s face reddened as the discussion continued. He finally stood up and said: “These are all great ideas,” he said, his voice growing in volume with each syllable.

“Now, I’m not mad. But I want to know where all the money is coming from to pay for all this stuff?”

The room suddenly became silent. Everyone got his logic. We didn’t have the money.

That was Ken Brown. ODU’s Voice of Reason, the guy who balanced the books in good times and bad and who guided the Monarch athletic program through a period of tremendous growth, and, at times, economic crisis.

For 14 years, Brown managed ODU’s athletics budget. He was No. 2 in the department, reporting to Dr. Wood Selig, ODU’s director of athletics.

He was the gatekeeper for our precious athletics resources when ODU moved up to the Football Bowl Subdivision, renovated S.B. Ballard Stadium, added women’s volleyball and recently began a $24 million renovation of our baseball facility.

Three years ago, ODU moved to the Sun Belt Conference, a move that required major investments in football and other programs.

And there was the pandemic, when ODU’s revenues shrank by millions. Ken helped guide us through an entire athletic year in which ODU didn’t play football and was forced to limit home basketball attendance to 250 spectators per game.

Ken managed to stretch every dollar beyond its point of elasticity.

And then came the transfer portal and Name, Image and Likeness, which added more stress to our budget.

“He was responsible for a $30 million budget that increased to more than $50 million in his 14 years,” Dr. Selig said. “The buck always stopped with him. He monitored the budget and knew where every penny was.”

“He was such a great steward of our financial resources.”

Ken recently retired from ODU and sought to go out quietly. He worked remotely from Indiana in recent years and declined accept an offer of a retirement party in Norfolk to celebrate his outstanding tenure.

“He was very emotional,” Dr. Selig said. “He didn’t want any ceremony, any last meetings, not even a Zoom farewell.”

“For Ken, it was never about Ken. It was about everybody else.”

When I called Ken recently, he said: “I don’t want any stories about me!”

Sorry, Ken. Your story, about a good man, a great husband and father, an insightful, well-respected administrator who loves ODU athletics and genuinely cared for all those around him, who helped us through good times and bad, should be told.

Family has always come first for Ken.

Ken and his wife, Mary Sue, have seven children: Adam, Andy, Jake, Erin, Meghan, Kate and Sarah. Devoutly religious, he was raised Methodist but is now a practicing Catholic because Mary Sue is Catholic.

When his wife asked him to move back to Indiana, to be closer to their grown children, Ken attempted to resign from ODU. But Dr. Selig urged him to continue to work for ODU remotely, and he did so for six more years.

“The fact that Wood allowed him to work remotely shows you how important he was to the department,” said former basketball coach Jeff Jones.

“He’s a wonderful human being who became a very good friend. He’s a man I respect and admire and love.”

His family has been through a lot. Sarah was diagnosed with cancer at three years old and was successfully treated at St. Jude’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

If you’ve never met Sarah, she’s the cutest young woman on planet earth and loves ODU athletics. She would often exchange fist bumps with Monarch basketball players as they entered the court.

“Ken got the biggest kick watching Sarah cheer for ODU at basketball games,” Dr. Selig said.

Ken suffered a heart attack in 2019, shortly after he moved to Indiana, while on one of his quarterly visits to Norfolk. He was treated successfully at Sentara Norfolk Heart Hospital.

“They put a stint in his heart one morning,” said Nicole Turner, ODU’s executive senior associate director for business and finance.

“That evening, he called me and started telling some of his corny jokes.  He has a great sense of humor.”

Back in Indiana, Mary Sue was treated for a serious autoimmune disease in recent years, again successfully.

“My wife is a pretty tough cookie. She’s tougher than me,” Ken said.

They’ve been married nearly 50 years. “And I’d marry her all over again,” he said.

He acknowledged that he maintained his well-polished reputation as a grouchy, curmudgeon because, well, that’s how finance guys are supposed to act.

He had a sign on his desk that said, “No,” and “Hell No.”

“He had a rough exterior,” said Turner, who was Ken’s top assistant. “But that’s not Ken.

“Sometimes a budget guy has to say no, to make tough choices, so you aren’t always seen in the most positive light. But he was so good at making people aware of our problems and limitations. Everyone who knew him well knew what a very kind and decent man he is.

“He would walk around and check on people and get to know who they were. He asked about your kids, your spouse. He’s just a good guy.”

“What you see with Ken is what you get,” said former ODU All-American basketball player Dave Twardzik who for many years was the color commentator for Monarch basketball.

“I got to know Ken pretty well. There was no hidden agenda. He was extremely honest and loves his family so much.”

Ken speaks with a bit of a southern drawl, and that comes from his upbringing in Rising Sun, Indiana, population 2,242, located on the Kentucky border. He was raised on small-town values – hard work, honesty and most of all, treating people with dignity.

And he’s worn a lot of hats.

He graduated from Eastern Kentucky University and was a school teacher for five years. He met Mary Sue on a blind date his first year out of college. It wasn’t quite love at first sight but close. They were married a year later. Ken longed to go into athletics, so he stopped teaching to earn a master’s degree in athletics administration from Ohio University.

Eventually, as they began to have children, she stopped working. “I told her that raising our kids was the most important job in the world,” Ken said.

He did a summer internship with the Louisville Redbirds baseball team and then moved to the University of North Carolina as director of athletics ticketing.

Those were the glory days of Carolina basketball – Dean Smith was the coach, and Michael Jordan was a junior when he arrived, and he oversaw ticketing when the Dean Dome opened in 1986.

He left after seven years and spent 16 seasons as senior associate athletics director at Ball State before moving on as athletics director at Lambuth University in Jackson, Tennessee.

He hired Hugh Freeze, now Auburn’s head coach, briefly as the Lambuth football coach. “Hugh said he never would have left,” Ken said. “But he told me, ‘I’ve got a young family,’ and we couldn’t give him any more money. So, he ended up leaving.”

So did Brown, in 2011, when Lambuth shut down as a university. He knew Selig casually from his time at UNC and when he heard ODU was looking for someone to run its business side, he applied.

“It was clear from his first time on campus that he was the guy,” Selig said.

Mary Sue was more popular at Lambuth than Ken because of her culinary skills. The budget was so tight that she often cooked pregame meals for all 11 of its athletic teams.

She quickly became popular at ODU, too, as once a month or so, Ken would fill his car with pans, crock pots and bowls of food. Chicken and dumplings, chicken enchiladas, pork barbecue, mac and cheese, bread and nearly every dessert conceivable would all be available in a small kitchenette near his office.

“Ken would text people, ‘Ken’s Cafe is open today,’” Turner said. “He would walk around the department and tell them food is here. He would call people from the other side of campus, people we work with.”

It was a way of thanking and bringing people together socially who work very hard to make athletics successful.  

Jena Virga, executive director of the Old Dominion Athletic Foundation, worked closely with Ken. As the fundraising organization for athletics, ODAF had to make organizational changes as ODU moved up to FBS.

“Ken tried to help us make the right decisions,” Virga said. “We had to raise a lot more money and he helped us get there.”

“The thing I loved about him is that he was not afraid to speak his mind. So many people don’t do that. And when you’re talking about money, the budget, and finances, you have to do that.”

“He was never afraid to make the tough calls.”

Ken is no longer making the tough calls. He says he’s enjoying retirement, as is young Sarah.

“She was the most excited of anyone in the family to learn that Ken was retiring because it meant she could spend more time with her daddy,” Turner said.

Turner has taken over his financial duties.

“She’s been serving as Ken’s No. 2 for such a long time,” Dr. Selig said. “She’s experienced it all and she’s ready. Ken taught her well.

“That made it easier for Ken to retire. He knew he had a great succession plan. He left us in great shape with someone able to transition seamlessly into that role.”

Yet, he is missed. And it will be good to see him again on August 30 when the ODU football team plays at Indiana.

Ken, Mary Sue and Sarah are all scheduled to attend the game. Dr. Selig said he can’t wait for the long overdue reunion.

“I never worked with anyone I respected more, that I valued more, that I appreciated more than Ken Brown,” he said.

“We were like an old married couple. He could finish my sentences. I could finish his.

“It got harder when the cost of college athletics began to increase exponentially. There are only so many revenue sources. It was taxing on him. He took great pride in operating a balanced budget year after year and it’s become exponentially challenging to do that today.

“Ken deserves this time with his family. It’s Ken’s time now. It’s 100% family time. They deserve him more than anyone else after all he has given to so many others.”

Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram