Not too many years ago, and certainly within living memory of many of its graduates, the University of Denver was known as a school with a first-class hockey team and some distinguished alumni but not much else.

On Wednesday, DU places another feather in what is now a festooned hat: It hosts Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in the first 2012 presidential debate in the campus' Magness Arena, part of the gleaming Ritchie Center complex.

Daniel Ritchie, the center's namesake, will have to feel a surge of pride.

"It's nice to see, but really, the feeling of accomplishment is about 'we,' not 'me,' " said Ritchie, who served as DU's chancellor from 1989 to 2005, leaving a legacy that transformed the school.

The former chancellor is credited with laying the foundation for the school's big TV moment, along with elevating it to a nationally respected institution that draws an international student body and top academics to a compact jewel box of a campus in south Denver.

"I think DU is at a level we never would have reached without Dan Ritchie leading the charge," said Joy Burns, who owns the Burnsley Hotel and serves on DU's board of trustees, which she chaired under Ritchie's tenure as chancellor.

Ritchie certainly did not accomplish this alone. He had a hard-working staff, professors who bought into his vision, and a cohort of area citizens who dipped deep into their wallets after he challenged them for matching grants and other donations.

And he led by example.

Ritchie didn't take a paycheck as chancellor. In persuading DU board members to participate in matching grants to the school, he donated his sprawling Grand River Ranch in Kremmling to underwrite the matches.

Since he

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Daniel Ritchie: The man who laid the foundation for DU's big moment