Texas Border Business
EDINBURG, Texas – The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) Department of Intercollegiate Athletics announced on Tuesday the addition of Greg Lynch as the new Assistant Athletic Director for Development.
“Greg Lynch comes highly recommended and is a great addition to our External Operations Team,” said Vince Volpe, UTRGV’s Deputy Director of Athletics/Chief Revenue Officer. “Greg’s relationship building experience in professional and collegiate sports, from coast to coast, will be critically important as we continue to build a foundation of philanthropy for UTRGV Athletics. Greg is a great fit for our department and I know our V Club donors, season ticket holders and corporate partners will enjoy working with him.”
Lynch is a business development executive with over 10 years of experience developing customer relationships to impact sales production and revenue generation. He received his Bachelor of Science in Sports Management from the University of Massachusetts. He has worked in collegiate and professional sports since 2008.
Lynch spent the last four years serving as general manager for respective Learfield IMG College schools. He spent two years leading the Little Rock Trojan Sports Properties team at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock and then was the GM for Warhawk Sports Properties at the University of Louisiana at Monroe for two years. Prior to those stops, he was the manager of business development on Learfield IMG College’s team representing Florida Atlantic University. Lynch was awarded Rookie of the Year in the South Region while at FAU and Property of the Year while at ULM. He played a pivotal role in ULM producing more in corporate partnerships than the university ever had before, breaking thresholds that had not been crossed.
Lynch got his start in ticket sales, serving for two years as the manager of ticket sales for the Detroit Lions and two years as the director of outbound ticket sales for Boston College. While with the Lions, he helped cultivate the second largest attendance increase in the NFL for 2010 and was a multi-year NFL team award winner for sales, leading a staff recognized by the commissioner as the top team in group sales.
Additionally, Lynch spent time as the manager of premium seating for the San Diego Chargers (2012-13), the Director 360 Premium for the Florida Panthers (2013-15), the premium all-access manager for the Brooklyn Nets (2015-16), the manager of business development for Entertainment Benefits Group (2016-17) and the senior sales executive for suites for Miami Marlins (2017-19).
He has an abundance of experience leading teams and making deep, lasting connections with the communities he works in. Lynch is looking forward to stepping into a new career path in athletic development and believes the tools he developed working in various levels of athletics will help him adapt quickly.
“I’ve had the opportunity to dive into development and I really love the deep-dive process of getting to know folks and their background,” Lynch said. “With development, you get to learn what they want their legacy to be and how they see themselves, how they’re tied to the university, and build off that. I think a lot of the tools I’ve developed over the years at such a high level translate into the development world very well.”
Lynch was drawn to UTRGV Athletics for two reasons – one, because the addition of football means excitement and growth for the university, and two, to have the opportunity to work with several current UTRGV staffers he narrowly missed working with at Little Rock, including Vice President and Director of Athletics Chasse Conque, Deputy Director of Athletics/Senior Woman Administrator Molly Castner, Chief of Staff/Associate Athletic Director for Revenue Generation Seth Jones and Senior Associate Athletic Director for Operations John Evans. He is eager to contribute to UTRGV’s efforts to #RallyTheValley and to the upward momentum of the department.
“I’m feeling fantastic about joining UTRGV Athletics. I wanted to be a part of something special,” Lynch said. “I’m looking forward to getting to know Vaquero Nation and getting to know those folks who are equally as passionate about athletics and the university as we are, and getting to understand how we can connect the dots for them to athletics and to the university.”
