Giant-Sized Talent
Behind-the-scenes Huskies building on success of NFL champs.
By Paul Perillo
At the end of Super Bowl XLII, as Tom Brady’s desperation heave hit the turf, the Northeastern campus wasn’t that cheerful a place to be. There, as throughout the Northeast region, the New England Patriots’ failure to notch a 19-0 season was beheld by mostly disbelieving eyes.
Yet there are a few Huskies who could not have been happier about how it all went down at University of Phoenix Stadium last February.
Dan Lynch, BA’86, and Ken Sternfeld, BA’84, loved every minute of what they saw. It’s only natural. The duo has key front-office jobs with the New York Giants—Lynch in marketing, and Sternfeld in player personnel.
“It was an incredible experience,” says Lynch, the vice president of media and partnerships, who now has the enviable charge of selling the world champions.
Of course, he wouldn’t have the job without Northeastern, he says.
“The co-op program was just a wonderful place to learn how to sell,” Lynch says. “Everything about the school was a positive experience for me, including meeting my wife, Judi [BA’86], there.”
As a co-op student, the young sports fan worked with the Bay State Bombardiers, a minor league basketball team in Worcester.
Then he hooked up with classmate Mike Sheehan, BA’86, MBA’88, for another project: A team in the old United States Football League was hiring college kids to sell as many tickets as they could on commission.
Lynch and Sheehan got creative. “We started this company called Quick Tix,” Lynch says. “That’s when I realized this was what I wanted to do.” After graduation, he worked at GE for about a year. “But I knew selling lightbulbs wasn’t for me.”
So Lynch went home to Westfield, New Jersey, and sent a résume to the New Jersey Nets, where he landed a job in corporate sales. Eventually, he became their vice president of media and broadcasting. In between, he held down jobs as NASCAR’s director of multimedia marketing and the New York Giants’ director of sales, and sold sponsorships for virtually every team in the New York market at radio stations WABC and WFAN.
In March 2007, Lynch went back to the Giants for his current job, handling sales and marketing efforts for the Giants Radio Network as well as all other team-controlled media relationships.
“It’s rare to find a job you love,” he says. “I owe that to Northeastern.”
Sternfeld just completed his sixth season with the Giants. As the team’s assistant director of pro personnel, he looks for the muscle and speed that make the team formidable.
His long NFL career began with the New England Patriots, where he worked twenty-one years. He joined the Pats as a co-op, running their office during training camp.
“I did pretty much everything they asked,” Sternfeld says of his early Patriots days. “I worked in the ticket office, made travel arrangements, worked in community relations when they needed help. I was even the Turk one year.”
In the NFL, the latter job is about as unpleasant as it gets. The Turk has the unenviable task of informing young players that the coach would like to see them, which inevitably means “You’re about to be released.”
Eventually, Sternfeld got more attractive duties. Working full-time as he completed his senior year at Northeastern, he managed the Patriots ticket office. Three years later, he got a surprising offer.
“[Director of player development] Dick Steinberg asked me if I’d be interested in becoming a scout,” Sternfeld says. It was an offer he hadn’t expected. “I had no experience in personnel, but [Steinberg] said I could learn the business. He said I was an intelligent guy and, if I worked hard, I’d be successful.”
More than two decades later, it’s safe to say Sternfeld made the cut.
“It’s great to do something every day you love,” he says, unknowingly echoing Lynch. In yet another mirror image, Sternfeld met his wife—Anne, AS’84—as a Northeastern undergrad, too.
The Giants’ Huntington Ave. crew—which also includes assistant trainer Steve Kennelly, BHD’85, and secondary coach Peter Giunta, BB’79, who was a running back and defensive back for the Huskies from 1974 to 1977—has found the only negative about top-dog status is the added workload it brings.
“I haven’t taken a break yet,” Lynch says. “But that’s a good problem to have.”
Powerful Pena Hits the Heights
Carlos Pena stepped onto a speeding roller coaster in 1998, when, as a junior with 24 career homers notched on his bat, he left Northeastern to make it big in Major League Baseball.
Throughout the ascents and descents that followed, baseball insiders agree, he’s remained as personable and genuine as any professional athlete you’ll ever meet.
And today the Tampa Bay Rays first baseman finds himself riding higher than ever. Pena blazed through a phenomenal 2007 season with the Rays, establishing career highs of 46 home runs and 121 runs batted in. Over the off-season, he agreed to a long-term deal that will keep him in Tampa for three years and put more than $24 million in his pocket.
Quite a haul for a guy who’d spent six years of his major league career searching for a home.
Drafted tenth overall in 1998 by the Texas Rangers, Pena finished a standout season for Northeastern coach Neil McPhee, then signed on with Texas. By the end of 2001, he was playing in the big leagues. He made an appearance in 22 Rangers games and hit his first three major-league home runs.
Dealt to Oakland during the offseason, he started the 2002 schedule in dramatic style, blasting a 3-run walk-off homer that gave the A’s a big opening-day win.
But the success was short-lived. Pena played just 40 games in Oakland before getting sent back to the minors with a .218 batting average. Soon he was on the move again, to Detroit. He spent three and a half years as the Tigers first baseman, playing on some terrible teams, including the 2003 squad, which lost 119 games, an American League record.
Pena could hit the long ball, just not well enough to establish himself as a top-tier player. With high strikeout totals and a batting average in the .230 to .245 range, he was let go by Detroit after the 2005 season.
He spent almost all of 2006 in the minors with the Yankees triple-A affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, then exercised an option in his contract and became a free agent in August. The Haverhill, Massachusetts, native realized a dream when his beloved Boston Red Sox picked him up for their stretch drive. He played 18 games for the Sox, highlighted by a walk-off home run against Chicago at Fenway Park.
But, ultimately, the Red Sox declined to bring him back. At twenty-eight, Pena was out of a job again. His options were—to put it mildly—limited.
With nowhere else to go, he signed a minor-league deal with a struggling Rays franchise in 2007. An injury to another player just before the start of the regular season allowed him to open with the big club. And, suddenly, he rediscovered the stroke that used to keep residents living around Brookline’s Friedman Diamond anxiously scanning the skies.
The 2007 season became Pena’s personal home-run derby. His 46 home runs and 121 RBIs dwarfed his previous career bests of 27 and 82, set in 2004. He finished second behind New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez (54) in American League homers. He was named the league’s Comeback Player of the Year.
Then came the huge contract. And a much different career outlook. This year, he’s an instrumental player on a Rays team that has already spent time in first place in its division.
What a difference a year—or six—can make.