Troy Dannen

Troy Dannen, a leading voice in collegiate athletics with extensive experience as an athletic director and deep ties to the Midwest, is in his first year as Nebraska’s Director of Athletics. Dannen was hired on March 20, 2024, and has hit the ground running in Lincoln.

Nebraska Athletics enjoyed success during Dannen’s first championship season, as the Husker baseball program won its first Big Ten Tournament title and reached the 40-win plateau for the first time since 2014 while the Husker track teams put together impressive showings. The Husker men won the Big Ten Outdoor title and earned their best NCAA Championship finish since 2016 with a 13th-place finish, while the Husker women posted their second straight top-10 NCAA finish and placed ninth at the national meet. Nebraska finished 22nd in the final 2023-24 Learfield Director’s Cup, the program’s highest finish since 2010. 

Dannen has been a leader in charting the course for a new era of collegiate athletics, serving from 2021 to 2023 as a member of the NCAA Constitution Committee and the Division I Transformation Committee. Dannen also previously served as the chair of the NCAA Football Competition Committee and was an Executive Committee member of the Football Oversight Committee. In total, Dannen has served on seven NCAA committees. 
In 2022, Dannen was a finalist for Sports Business Journal’s Athletic Director of the Year award, and he received the Distinguished American Award from the Sugar Bowl Chapter of the National Football Foundation.

Dannen came to Lincoln after serving as Director of Athletics at the University of Washington. He helped guide the Huskies’ transition to the Big Ten Conference and oversaw a football program that reached the College Football Playoff National Championship Game in January of 2024. 

He arrived at Washington in the fall of 2023 after serving as Director of Athletics at Tulane University since 2015. While at Tulane, Green Wave student-athletes earned 49 All-America honors, a national championship, 21 conference championships and 41 postseason appearances.

In 2022-23, Tulane football won its first American Athletic Conference football championship and won the Cotton Bowl over USC, which was ranked ninth in the nation at that time. The men’s basketball program won 20 regular-season games for the first time in two decades. Additionally, men’s tennis advanced to its sixth NCAA Tournament in seven years, both bowling and beach volleyball finished ranked in the top 20, and baseball won the conference championship.

Tulane’s football program participated in an unprecedented three consecutive bowl games from 2018 to 2020, winning back-to-back bowl games for the first time in 128 years of football at the University.
In the classroom, Tulane student-athletes excelled at a high-level. At the end of the 2022-23 academic year, over 68 percent of Green Wave student-athletes earned a 3.0 GPA or better, with a 93 percent Graduation Success Rate and a record-setting department Academic Progress Report of 992, with seven teams earning a perfect 1000 APR score.

Dannen spearheaded fundraising efforts and numerous capital projects at Tulane. He helped secure the largest unrestricted gift in Tulane Athletics history, an endowment gift that funded the operation of a new sport (sailing), and a $10 million lead gift for capital renovations, which was the second-largest gift in department history. In addition, marketing and licensing revenue grew four-fold, and in 2022-23, Tulane football, basketball and volleyball set ticket sales and revenue records. Under Dannen’s leadership, the Green Wave Club Annual Fund grew by 40 percent in terms of donors, and 45 percent in terms of dollars.

Increases in fundraising and major gift donors positively impacted capital project development and completion. A $13 million renovation to the Reilly Natatorium, home of the swimming and diving program, as well as $8 million in renovations to locker rooms and the sports medicine area inside the Wilson Center were completed in 2023. Dannen also oversaw construction of a new dining facility, weight room, basketball and volleyball locker rooms. Tulane also completed a $2.4 million academic center renovation and a $5 million television and digital production center.

Dannen came to Tulane after serving eight years as the Director of Athletics at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) from 2008 to 2015. During his tenure, the Panthers enjoyed success at both the conference and national levels, highlighted by an NCAA Sweet 16 appearance in 2010 by the UNI men’s basketball team. During his eight-year tenure, UNI was recognized with 39 All-Americans, 13 Coaches of the Year and nine Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) Players of the Year. UNI football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, volleyball and softball combined to reach 15 NCAA tournaments and 20 postseason berths during that stretch. For his efforts, Dannen was recognized as NACDA’s FCS Athletic Director of the Year in 2014.

Prior to his time at UNI, Dannen served as the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union’s Executive Director for seven years, overseeing 400 high schools and 10 sports.

Dannen grew up on a farm just outside Marshalltown, Iowa, and graduated from UNI in 1989 with a degree in communications. He is married to Amy, and has four children: Elle, Emily, Holly and William.