WILL SEBERGER/Arizona Daily Wildcat Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo addresses a crowd of over 300 yesterday at Gallagher Theater in the Student Union Memorial Center.

"Don't be afraid to fail."

Those were Jerry Colangelo's parting words to an overcrowded Gallagher Theater in the Student Union Memorial Center yesterday afternoon.

Over 300 UA students and others, many of whom wound up having to sit on the floor in the aisles, came to listen to Colangelo speak as part of a series of lectures put on by the Eller Business College and the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity.

Colangelo, the chairman, CEO and managing general partner of the Phoenix Suns and 2001 World Series champion Arizona Diamondbacks, said he's the only person in professional sports who has played, scouted, coached, managed, acted as general manager and owned a team.

Colangelo was a star basketball player at the University of Illinois, and when his brief professional career fizzled, he aspired to do greater things in the sports realm.

"I'm a product of the system," he said. "I was never in this to make money. I was in it to be successful and win."

Colangelo made his way from growing up in a poor Italian American neighborhood in suburban Chicago to becoming the architect of the Suns, D-Backs and Chicago Bulls.

Before the age of 30, Colangelo, now 63, along with a close friend, quietly put together enough money to bring a professional basketball franchise to Illinois in 1966.

"Nobody knew we were doing this behind the scenes," Colangelo, the creator of the current Bulls logo, said.

Colangelo would only be with the Bulls for two years, however, before another expansion franchise came

calling. One of the principal members of the Phoenix Suns expansion group was Carl Eller, who convinced Colangelo to move west.

"I excused myself (from a meeting), called my wife and said, 'Pack your bags, babe. It's Phoenix,'" he said.

"We decided to get Jerry Colangelo (to speak) because he's worked with Mr. Karl Eller of the Eller College," said Faham Zakariaei, vice president of marketing for the Eller College's Sports Marketing Association and vice president of public relations for Alpha Kappa Psi.

Though he owns the Diamondbacks, Colangelo said he was a Chicago Cubs fan for 50 years and he felt the pain of the team's agonizing history like every other Chicagoan.

"Heck, I had to go buy my own team just to win a game at Wrigley," he joked.

Colangelo depicted himself as the prime example of what someone can do with ambition and a college education - and, although he was determined to succeed, he said he had no idea how successful he would become.

"I never dreamed for a minute all that would lie ahead of me," he said.