University of Calgary Athletics

Jack Neumann’s extraordinary 34-year career at the University of Calgary touched the lives of countless student-athletes, coaches, alumni, and members of the community and cemented his status as a legendary figure in Dinos history.

A native of Saskatoon, Jack was hired away from the oil and gas industry in 1978. Appointed as Sports Information Director, he quickly became a trailblazer in Canadian university athletics. As one of the first full-time SIDs in the country, he pushed sports information forward by building local, national, and international contacts in the media and the sports world, building a Rolodex that was the envy of everyone he met.

A tireless supporter and promoter of the Dinos, Jack was also a champion of the sports information profession. He served as president of the Canadian SID association, moving the profession forward across the country and helping pave the way for standardization in many areas of CIS communications. His encyclopedic memory and his passion for sport and the student-athletes he promoted made him uniquely effective in his position.

For his entire career, Jack was an active participant and member of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), winning several publication awards for his outstanding work. He remains the only Canadian to have ever served on CoSIDA's Board of Directors (1990-92), and in 2004 he became the first Canadian SID to be inducted into the organization's Hall of Fame – the highest honour in the profession. That same year, he organized the CoSIDA convention in Calgary – the only time it has ever been held outside the United States.

Preferring to maintain the focus on the athletes, he always shied away from personal accolades – but there were plenty of those anyway. In 2012, Jack was presented with CoSIDA's Warren Berg Award, recognizing his longtime contributions to the profession, at the annual convention in St. Louis. The award joined a long line of other honours, which include the Order of the University of Calgary (2005), the Calgary Italian Sportsman's Club lifetime achievement award (2005), and the Dinos Football Distinguished Alumni Award (2008) – the first time the award was presented to a non-player.

Jack received induction into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 2006 as winner of the Achievement Award for his more than three decades of dedication and service to amateur sport in Alberta.

After moving on from his SID position in 2007, Jack stayed involved in a fundraising capacity and helped raise more than $1 million for athletic scholarships for Dinos student-athletes.