January 18, 2022 • 39 mins
Through the mid-1980s, those working in Maryland athletics considered themselves members of a big family. But with the death of Len Bias, that family imploded and the department struggled for years. Find out how in this episode, A Dark Cloud.
About the narrator: Don Markus is a retired, former sports reporter for the Baltimore Sun who covered Maryland athletics since 1985. He is an adjunct professor of Journalism at American University.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is based in large part of the book
Born Ready, The Mixed Legacy of Lambis. Some quotes are
narrated by Davon Grady, a podcast producer and the author
of the book, from interviews done for the book. Recordings
for these comments were not available. This segment is dedicated
to the memory of Russ Potts, the pioneering sports marketer
for Maryland Athletics, who passed away in December. Pots is
(00:24):
featured in several episodes of the series, including this one.
A short tribute to pots can be heard at the
conclusion of this episode. Maryland is one of the most
puzzling situations I've ever seen. There's no institutional memory, and
without institutional memory, you can't understand what got you there
(00:48):
and what you need to focus on. But to keep
you two at the top. It was significant for the
first year. I think it was really oppressive on all
of us for about a year. It's just unbelievable. I
mean how it affected. It changed the entire university for
(01:11):
for mega years. Miss Weather handled it in no jobs
for us to do so we can generate money for
the teams one time as Weather trying to get us
the mo grass for people we don't know how to
mo grad. We take out the track team pretty much.
(01:32):
To eliminate minorities for non reminue sports, we were we
were hitting fatais for I mean just just say a
couple of years, um, trying to just fight off most
you know, cut or rehiminated. I'll tell you how bad
(01:54):
it was. I'm from Boston and when I went home,
if I wore anything that said Maryland on it, I
was a pariah. Was kind of laughed at by every
university in the country. Uh. And then when len Bias died,
(02:14):
all of a sudden, it became more of hey, um,
just like any other medical procedure, there's more checks and balances.
I think back then it was how how could this
have happened? But now it's like, we can all see
how this could happen. This could have happened to any
of us. We've learned the lesson, but you have to
(02:37):
move on. Now you've seen really like a full circle.
We we we embrace it and we're proud of it.
And lenn is a legend and an icon UH in
the athletic department. Now I think the message is there,
what happened tragic, Let's make sure it never happens again.
(03:01):
Up next on Lumbias and Mixed Legacy, a dark Class.
In the last five months of ninety six, the University
of Maryland athletic department had a dramatically transformed Its athletic
director was done, so was its men's basketball coach and
(03:22):
football coach, all victims of the fallout from the death
of Lambias. At the time, Frank Costello was the strength
coach for Maryland. He was an All American high jumper
in the nineteen sixties and was the school's head coach
of the track and field team in the late nineteen seventies.
He saw firsthand how changes altered the character of Maryland's
(03:42):
athletic department. There was a job and a family kind
of atmosphere working at the university. But then after Lenny died,
of course you got this tragedy and like you said,
the dominants just spelled. Plus you had this shadow falling
over here what happened to Lenny, So it was a
(04:03):
lot different. Russ Potts was the athletic department's first marketing director.
Maryland needed a healer. They needed a person with compassion
and love and kindness, and that kind of personality and
uh I felt that they could have built on people
who were loyal to the program and uh and worked
(04:27):
their way out of that. But it has been one
massive challenge after another at Maryland, which saddens me. Saddens
me a great deal, and they've run through so many
coaches and so many administrators, many of whom don't have
any idea about the heritage there. Heritage was not on
(04:50):
the mind of Robert Sturts when he took over as
interim athletic director on November. Starts work previously as a
university vice chancellor for administrative affairs. A big part of
his mission was to suggest changes within the athletic department.
Many were made. By the end of January of nine,
(05:12):
seven seventeen staff positions were eliminated. Those moves were a
result of an independent department review done by Michigan Athletic
Director Don Cannon. He focused on the department structure and efficiency.
Among those acts was Jim Deach, part of that Maryland
family within the department, he was a former Maryland athlete.
(05:33):
Each was also lacrosse and soccer coach at Maryland. Further,
he led the academic support unit when bias died and
was soon after moved to the ticket office. Also removed
the department's former marketing director, members of the sports information
office and maintenance staff. Sue Tyler was an assistant athletic
director at Maryland and a coach for women's field hockey
(05:54):
and lacrosse during that first year. Either it was just
such a crisis time that you're all worry about your
own space and so um we were all worried about
our own team and our own existence and our own
survival for a little bit. It would have wait about
two two and a half years, three year, two years.
I'd say it was significant For the first year. I
(06:15):
think it was really oppressive on all of us for
about a year. The moves helped the department deal with
a one million dollar deficit from that year. About a
quarter of that amount came from payouts to basketball coach
left to Giselle and athletic director Dick Doll. There was
also a reduced revenue from football and basketball games into
(06:37):
that challenging environment. Step Bob Wade, Maryland's new basketball coach.
Wade left one of the best high school programs in
the country, Dunbar in Baltimore. Sue Tyler noticed the ghost
of former coach left to Giselle lingered during the transition.
I think it was a really tough situation for him
to walk into. And it was a tough situation coming
(06:58):
from such a high per file high school program and
thinking that it's going to be similar to what you
had in high school and it's dramatically different all the
things going on. There were people that were so still
behind Lefty that anybody the next anybody would have been
(07:20):
had a tough time. Derrick Lewis was a junior on
the team at You're in Maryland. I think anyone coming
in with the situation that bias is going to be
over the Molly Glassman covered Wade as a high school
coach and at Maryland while she was a reporter for
the Baltimore Evening Sun. Bob is a very proud man,
(07:42):
very strong in his belief in himself. Um. He accomplished
a hell of a lot at Dunbar, and I think
as time went on at Maryland, the frustration of not
being his not being in control all of everything, did
(08:03):
lead him to kind of, you know, sequester himself apart
from from the rest of the department. Wads tumultuous three
years at Maryland are explained in more detail and segment
two of section two in this series. That segment explains
the evolution of Maryland basketball from the tragedy of len
bias his death to the triumph of the Terms winning
(08:25):
their first national title in two thousand two. You're listening
to Len Bias the Mixed Legacy on the Eighth Side Network.
A couple of months after Wade completed his first year
at Maryland, the athletic department had a new athletic director
who was Lou Perkins, and he appeared to be a
(08:47):
good fit. Perkins had served in the same role at
which to State University. There, he guided the program through
an n c A probation caused by recruiting violations from
its basketball teams. When he was introduced as Maryland's athletic
director at a press conference, Perkins said he planned to
institute an extensive policy manual for coaches to read and sign.
(09:08):
Tyler remembers that Perkins asked each coach to assign the
manual as an agreement that they understood its content. Some
people thought it was an annoyance and that it was
a cost that wasn't necessary, you know, I was, I
think a couple hundred pages of things how to how
to navigate different issues. Here's an outsider telling us how
(09:28):
to operate. We've been operating here for fifteen, twenty years
or whatever. But I think all in all, it was
a It was a good idea. I think pretty much
laid it out very clearly, so that if somebody didn't
do a step, you would say, well, you didn't, you
missed step three, already missed. You missed step three or
four and five, and you just went to the end.
(09:48):
Was very worthy and very long, but something like that
needed to happen. The manual was one of many changes
instituted Maryland during perkins time as athletic director. Standards for
current athletes were tightened. Athletes had to maintain certain grade
point averages to remain eligible. Admission for athletes who were
(10:09):
considered at risk academically were cut by more than half. Further,
the ceiling for special admissions for football players was reduced
from thirty to ten. Restrictions were clearly affecting the quality
of players Maryland could recruit. The nine eight seven season
began one of the worst stretches in the one hundred
nineteen year history of Maryland football, with the Terrapin's recording
(10:30):
a winning season just once in eight seasons. Podcast producer
Davion Grady recalled the story that Joe Krievac, who took
over as the team's football coach when Bobby Ross left
following the nine eight seven season, told him for his
book about Lynn Bias. Maryland prepared to play Penn State
in early November. In Penn State was ranked number nine
(10:53):
in the country at the time. It was during Krieback's
final years head coach. The Terms had a two and
six record. Prievak found out Monday before the game that
a few of his players had not maintained the grade
point average minimum they were ruled ineligible. Kreevak appealed to
athletic director Andy Geiger, he had replaced Perkins. Rievac said, quote,
(11:17):
I asked him, what are we doing this for. It
doesn't violate any anti double A rules, He said, coach,
you just have to live with it. But he didn't
have to play the game on Saturday. Maryland lost the
game seven, and then they lost their last two games
to finish two and nine. It was Krievak's worst record
as head coach Tyler the assistant athletic director. He calls
(11:41):
a somber mood prevailing within athletics during the early years
of the transition. And I know some folks did say
that he felt like they didn't want to go in
any more day to day. They just wanted to go
to their field or there the gym and go home.
We used to do a lot of things as coaches
together and that too for a while to get that
(12:02):
back of you know, going someplace for a drink, set
up Halloween party one time and half the department was there,
and we have Christmas parties and we didn't do that.
We didn't do that for a couple of years. We
didn't together as coaches and party. We didn't get together,
just didn't happen. We just all were doing our own thing.
(12:23):
But we had been prior to that. We had we
had been a good, fun, fun loving staff and um,
as I said, going to parties and had parties and
supported each other by going to each other's games. I
don't think that we went to other people's games. The
somber mood extended to the athletes as well. Here's as
he's a door a senior receiver on the football team
(12:46):
the year after Bias died. You know the cartoon Minus
who walked around with the cloud. That was it. That's
what you felt like. As the football team struggled, the
men's basketball team was enduring n c A sanctions caused
by coach Bob Wade. The sanctions took effect after Gary
Williams's first season taking over from Wade, and the terms
(13:06):
could not play in postseason games the next two years. This,
along with the football teams continued mediocrity, reduced athletic department
revenue by nearly three million dollars. As a result, the
department endured a major restructuring, affecting mostly non revenue sports.
In May, Perkins placed all sports and four tiers. He
(13:28):
also reduced scholarships in eight of its twenty three varsity
sports and reduced scholarship money by seventy and five others.
Perkins blamed the moves on the n c A sanctions
against the men's basketball team. Luke Perkins was hired because
he had a background and a knowledge of um n
(13:50):
c A rules, regulations and academic support and that he
did that that was and he was also given finances
and resources in order to make those things happen, and
so the the new academic support and the increase in
number of coaches of assistant athletic directors so that there
(14:14):
were there was more supervision of coaches, more supervision of
student athletes, um more paperwork, but just more accountability. In general,
the team's most affected with those in the lowest tier.
They included men's and women's indoor and outdoor track and field,
men's golf, women's gymnastics, and men's and women's tennis. Those
(14:36):
teams offered no scholarships and competed locally except for acc competition.
By this time, a once familiar mood within athletics was gone.
A sense of self preservation took over. Frank Costello was
Maryland's track coach in the mid and late nineteen seventies.
He was later Maryland's first strength coach until nine. It
(14:57):
took years to get any type of smoothness going, and
the just the attitude around the athletic department was uh
just not the same, well, maybe sadder or bleaker or
just uh not as joyous to be around. Bob Nelligan,
(15:22):
the head coach of women's gymnastics, remembered an uncomfortable discussion
with Perkins about the fate of his program. Louke Perkins
called me in and said, you know what, you're on
contract through the next year. You don't have to coach.
I'll find something for you to do. Just let it ride.
(15:44):
And I said, I'll have to get back to you
on that, and the kids said, no, we're fighting. So
that was all of a sudden this all the other
teams jumped on Lord. Everybody started going around and lobbying.
How close were you to losing the program? After lent too.
(16:07):
That was with Perkins, and then when Geiger came in,
we were under the gun again. Nelegan is referring to
Andy Geiger, who succeeded Perkins as athletic director in the
early nineteen nineties. Despite posting a string of winning records,
including his best team in he and his gymnasts had
(16:27):
to think of clever ways to raise money and keep
the program alive. We parked cars for football. We would
go out in the rain with flags and escort cards
to this to their spots. We cleaned coal Field House
(16:49):
after every basketball game. And believe me, when Nachos came
on board, that was the worst ever UM we We
did everything that there was to do. I could remember
one year we the football team had gone to the
(17:13):
Cherry Bowl all of these nylon jackets that had Cherry
Bowl on the on the chest, and they were smalls
and extra smalls, and he was like, what the heck
am I supposed to do with these things? And we
put a big Maryland patch over the Cherry Bold patch,
(17:39):
and my kids thought it was the greatest thing since
sliced bread. That was a part of the warm up.
Sportscaster Bonnie Bernstein was an academic All American when she
competed on the gymnastics team from We didn't really think
about how tedious some of the tasks we were doing.
We just knew that ultimately it was help in cash
(18:02):
in the team's collective pockets that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
But whether it was cleaning stadiums, working parking lots, working
n c A tournament games at Coldfield's house, whatever we
needed to do to earn a little extra money, we
were going to do because it was really all about
team Bernstein selfie impact of the cuts directly. She made
(18:26):
the team as a walk on freshman and had hoped
for scholarship soon after, and then that was all of
a sudden off the table. I had to figure out
a way to make the finances work. So I was
working three different jobs and going to school and competing.
Bernstein considered transferring. Then she wrote a letter to athletic
director Andy Geiger. We went up there for a meeting,
(18:47):
and Andy said, UM, I read your letter and sitting
here on my desk, and I'm scared to death because
I'm just thinking he's going to somehow take offense to
my having to leave. And he said, You've got your scholarship.
To this day, I have no idea how it was funded,
(19:08):
but it truly saved me from having to transfer. It
made it realize that, you know, we have to find
a way to survive, and the only way to survive
is to stick together and to be gwitty and to
be a resourceful. Despite being in the top tier of
the athletic program and one of the country's perennial top
(19:29):
twenty teams, women's basketball also needed to find creative ways
to stay fully funded. One was to have players sell
programs at football games, an idea that was not embraced
by many members of the team. Two top players transferred
after their freshman year because, according to coach Chris Weller,
they felt the work was beneath them. Vicky Bullett was
an All American from Maryland. She was among those on
(19:51):
the team that referred to themselves as survivors. Miss well
I had a little in not jobs for us, the
dude so we can generate money for the team. So
well one time as well to try to get us
the more grass for people. We don't know how to
mow grass. She just wanted us to get sweaty and
worked out. Bill Goodman was an Atlantic Coast Conference triple
(20:14):
jump champion from Maryland in the mid nineties seventies. Through
that decade, Maryland was the dominant program in the a SEC,
winning twenty five consecutive conference titles. As the track and
field coach, after Bias died, Goodman was forced to lobby
Perkins to keep the team intact. To support his cause,
He made the point that there were more minority students
(20:36):
on his team than in any other non revenue sport.
So if you take out the track team pretty much
to eliminate minorities certa non revenue sports, we we we were.
We were in sense for I mean, let's just say,
a couple of years, uh trying to just flight off
(20:57):
the uh most you know, gott and more reliminated. You know,
it's like trying to try it off a battle and
you get rid of all your change, then you get
rid of all your CONSUCA, and you get rid of
all your rifles. You down to listen, you know, it's
just getting worse than worse and worse and worse. During
(21:18):
the lean financial times and the restructuring after the death
of Bias, the mood of the coaches was a stark
departure from earlier times, and it reflected the mental state department.
Jack Jackson, Maryland's baseball coach for some three decades, had
a meeting with Perkins soon after he took over as
athletic director. Here's podcast producer David U. Grady we talked
(21:39):
with Jackson for his book about lam Bias. Jackson told
me we started talking about loyalty. He said, there ain't
such a thing as loyalty anymore. He said, anybody who
stays at a job more than five years is lazy.
I said, how about the guy who likes his job,
what does he do? Jackson retired as coach in ninete.
(22:02):
The wrestling team failed to win the a SEC title
only once from nineteen fifty four to nineteen seventy four,
and was starting to again show signs of prominence shortly
after Bias died. The nineteen eight sevent team featured three
All Americans. Still, the team had its scholarship aid reduced
by f John mckugh, Maryland wrestler, was the coach at
(22:24):
the time. John mqugh told me we were finally rolling
and able to recruit the big time guys. Then all
of a sudden, they cut our legs out from under us.
For three years, I didn't sign anybody. Still, the team
avoided a losing record of the early nineteen nineties and
finished second twice in the conference during that time. The
death of Bias also impacted the image of Maryland athletics
(22:48):
well beyond College Park. Gymnastics coach Bob Nelligan recalled uncomfortable
reactions he faced in his hometown. You've got to remember
we were under the spotlight for a long time. I'll
tell you how bad it was. I'm from Boston, and
(23:08):
when I went home, if I wore anything that said
Maryland on it, I was a pariah. Lenny Bias was
the savior of the Boston Celtics. He was the lifeblood
that was gonna hold that program to national prominence. And
(23:28):
they never let us forget that. They would do everything
but spit on you. What kind of drug school do
you have going on down there? You know, I just
you know, tough stuff. At the time of Biases death,
scrutiny of drug use among athletes in the United States
was escalating. The n c A announcements new drug testing
(23:50):
plan in the summer of It began in the fall
of Maryland had been testing its athletes since nineteen eighty. J. J. Bush,
an athletic trainer at Maryland's two, started the program along
with the university's health center. They copied protocols from programs
at the University of Florida, among others. Here's Bush, It
(24:12):
was totally random. We just at the time when you know,
we just sort of gave every kid a number and
then picked the numbers out of a hat. If your
number came up, your coach or in the basketball's case,
our director of operations was sent uh a list so
(24:35):
and so needs to report to the health center between
such and such a time, on such and such a date.
If it was a positive, they would do a second
test to make sure sure it was not a false positive,
and then if the person was positive, the coach was
notified by the director of the health center. The first
(24:57):
positive you had to go to a counseling session, and
if you came up with a second positive, you had
to sit out of a period of time from practice
or beat away from the team, maybe a week, I
forget exactly, and then the third time that was it.
You know you were done. Bush recalls only one athlete
(25:17):
testing positive amongst the four teams he worked with after
testing started. As he said in abdor Rove played his
final season with the Maryland football team after lended to
him the drug test was not very complicated. I mean
it was a urine test. You're go into bathroom and
you bring a cup out and your hand it to
that to test her, and you're out of there. It's
(25:38):
pretty simple. Former Maryland Jim that s Bonnie Bernstein feels
testing may have steered athletes away from abusing drugs. There
was a lot of random drug testing going on. The
reality is, when you're dealing with eighteen to twenty two
year old kids who are being independent, and many of
whom who were away from home for the first time,
(25:59):
that you're gonna experiment and you're gonna party, and you're
gonna roll your eyes at a lot of the coaches
Messa Jane about gearing clear of drugs, but the fact
that we always had to be on alert about random
drug tests, I think probably kept more student athletes honest
than you you might think. Gary Williams sort of changing
(26:20):
drug testing procedures while coaching at Ohio State. When Bias died,
drug testing was kind of laughed at by every university
in the country. UH, and then when Lynd Bias died,
all of a sudden, it became more of hey, um,
just like any other medical procedure. There, there's more checks
and balances things like that on the procedure. You know,
(26:42):
you're almost forced into it if you're an n G
double A Division one power conference school, because everybody saw
what it did to the University of Maryland and so
obviously you want to avoid that. So they really stepped
it up, and I think that that's the biggest benefit
to UH come out of the Lund Bias situation. I'm
(27:05):
sure that helped a lot of kids around that time
get on the proper path towards success. The death of
Bias and the fact that Marylyn was drug testing as
athletes also impacted recruiting for more than a decade. Opposing
coaches used biases death as a weapon to persuade parents
do not send their children to college park. Here's nelligan,
(27:28):
It just was thrown at us. Uh. It was hard
making a positive as a coach and a recruiter. How
do I tell a parent that, oh, yeah, if your
daughter comes to my school, she was gonna be drug
(27:48):
tested several times a year. Why would I want to
send my kid there? According to Gary Williams, opposing coaches
would make sure as to remind top players that Maryland
was a school where it's best basketball player died from
drug abuse. Uh. It was. It was a very difficult time. Uh,
and people were really suspicious of the University of Maryland
(28:11):
and basketball program. So, you know, I know recruits that
we were trying to recruit were made aware of just
about every article that was ever printed. You go into
a home and there will be articles, uh on the
Washington Post in State North Carolina or whatever, sitting on
the coffee table. And obviously they were sent by someone
(28:33):
you were recruiting against another university. You're listening to Lem
Bias the Mixed Legacy on the Eighth Side Network. Current
Maryland head football coach Mike Locksley grew up in Washington,
d C. He was a senior in high school when
Bias died. Locksley worked as an assistant to Ralph Reagent
in the early two thousands and so, as what typically
(28:56):
happens when there's tragedies and there's corrections, sometimes you overcorrect.
The tough part for us was, you know, being able
to get a marginal student into So now you're recruiting
against other schools that don't have these standards where they
limit how many you know, marginal students you can bring in.
And for US, now that makes recruiting that much harder
(29:19):
because you have to recruit a guy, but then you
have to also find a guy that has the grades,
uh to get in without you know, being considered a
marginal student, which would you know, then put them in
a place where they had to come into through a
bridge program and take extra courses. And there were a
lot of people that were turned away. They were good
players that, uh, we couldn't get in the school because
(29:43):
of this uh how the standards had changed to to
push our academic standards up a little bit. Still, Maryland
Athletics has managed to thrive in many ways in the
decades following the death of Bias, Led by a combined
twenty championships from field hockey, women's lacrosse turps teams have
won twenty nine national championships since nine. They include titles
(30:05):
by men's and women's basketball, and a few by the
men's soccer team. It would take decades from Maryland Athletics
collectively to finally accept the legacy of Bias. He was
not inducted into Maryland's Athletics Hall of Fame until two
thousand fourteen. We will explain that in more detail in
a later episode. Lefty Giselle, Maryland's coach when Bias died,
(30:27):
finally earned his Maryland Athletics Hall of Fame honor in
two thousand two. That was sixteen years after he left
the program. Maryland Athletics featured pictures of Bias and promotional
materials when it celebrated a hundred years of basketball in
two thousand nineteen. That would have seemed unimaginable just ten
years earlier. Brett Nelligan was five years old when Bias died.
(30:50):
At the time, his father, Bob, was Maryland's gymnastics coach.
Brett returned to Maryland in two thousand three as an
assistant to his father on the team. He took over
his head coach in two thousand and nine. He has
seen a transition to the acceptance of the Len Bias
legacy within Maryland athletics. And when I when I came back,
it just wasn't spoken about, you know, we just that
(31:12):
was a part of our history that was I think
still difficult for us as an athletic department, as a
fan base, as a as a community. It was just
too hard for us to to to really embrace to
talk about. But now you've seen really like a full circle.
We we we embrace it and we're proud of it.
(31:34):
And Lenn is a legend and an icon uh in
the athletic department now. And the bottom line is he's
still I think one of the greatest athletes to ever
wear Maryland jersey. And there's there's nothing that can change that.
What do you think changed it? Why all of a
sudden did they start to accept it? But I think
(31:54):
back then it was how how could this have happened?
But now it's like, we can all see how this
could happen. This could have happened to any of us.
And that's my point to my team, is this, this
could have happened to anyone us. We all make mistakes
every There's no one that's immune to making mistakes in
their life. So I just think there's a a greater
(32:15):
level of understanding in our in our world, on our
society now. Johnny Hollanday has been Maryland's played by play
announcers for forty years. A few others understand the transition
toward acceptance of Lynn's legacy within Maryland Athletics. And it's
a whole new ballgame now, a whole new generation of fans.
I've got grandkids that never heard of by us, and
(32:37):
then they go to YouTube and watch video highlights and
they say, oh, he was pretty good. I said, yeah,
a little better than pretty good. Well, he could jump,
he could shoot, he could score, he could run. Yeah,
And I think that's the best tribute to him. It's
to see people walking around at games at other revenge
(32:57):
what number thirty four and by us from the back
of their jersey in early December, Maryland held Led Bias
Night during a home game against Virginia Tech. It was
the first time Maryland dedicated one game to bias. Thousands
of free Led Bias Number thirty four jerseys were handed
out to fans. Thousands of number thirty four LED Biased
(33:18):
jerseys filled Exfinity Center, Maryland's home court, in a sea
of yellow and red bias. His name adorned the backs
of each jersey. The Bias family was also recognized during
(33:40):
the game, as he has done for Maryland since the
late nineties seventies, Johnny Holiday before radio play by play
(34:01):
for that game, people learned the lesson. We know it's
cost people jobs. We don't cost a young man's life.
But you have to move on, and you move on
by correcting mistakes that were done years and years ago.
I think the messages there what happened tragic. Let's make
sure it never happens again. Next. Online bias and mixed legacy,
(34:26):
mandatory minimums and maximum impact. Have the death of bias
affected a nation. The prep problem has become a crack
crisis and it's spreading nationwide. There was a misperception that
crack cocaine was something different chemically than what powder cocaine was. Yeah,
before the arrest, my life was I thought was perfect.
(34:47):
Everything I did, I did it with my children, boy,
Scout girl, Scout. Uh going to move it. I was
working at the Hospital of the Nerves because you know,
everything gets put down the draint at that moment this story,
there's no checks and balances. Once that prosecutors prosecutors sides
you're the bad person, it's over for you. And so
that that really tilted the system in a way that
(35:10):
gave the prosecutor too much palace. So the way Lyn
Bias operated in my head was it was almost like
a fucking ghost. But I didn't really know who he
was until I went to prison. I concluded that Lynn
biases death was the single most important date in the
history of drugs in the United States since the founding
(35:33):
of Alcoholics. Anonymous uh in June. Doesn't save lives, doesn't
reduce crime, So what does it do is passing. It
wasn't just a tragedy that we lost one great person.
We we lost a lot of great people. This is
(35:58):
Dave and Grady, executive user of this podcast series US
promised at the beginning of this episode, here's a tribute
to the late Russ Potts, who was featured in this
episode and others. It is presented by Chip Zimmer, a
former sports marketing director at Maryland and the author of
the book The Battle of the Potomac, a century long
(36:20):
football rivalry between the West Virginia Mountaineers and the Maryland Terrapins.
Zimmer was also my boss when I worked as an
intern in sports marketing at Maryland in nine. In a
late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, Maryland's new athletic director,
Jim Keo made some bold moves to revive the Turps
(36:41):
football and basketball programs. Football hadn't been relevant since Jim
Tatum left in nineteen fifty five, and basketball had been floundering.
New hires Jerry Claybourne and football and left Utri Zell
and basketball helped the programs achieve national prominence within a decade.
But perhaps as importantly, Kio in seventy hired Rust Pots
in nineteen sixty four Maryland graduate as the n C
(37:04):
Double A's first sports promotion director. Potts became known as
an innovator, a pioneer, and a maverick. If Bill Veck
was a godfather of baseball promotions, then Russ Potts was
as equal for college promotions. He turned Maryland football games
into events for the entire family. Multiple giveaways by corporate
sponsors became the norm. Cannons were fired as the terps
(37:25):
ran onto the field. Paratroopers delivered game ball at the
fifty yard line. The programs resembled telephone books, chalk full
of advertisers, tens of thousands of red and white go terps,
go bumper sticker adorned auto bumpers throughout the state of Maryland.
Dozens of billboards, and hundreds of thousands of pocket schedules
blanketed the state. I had the monumental task of succeeding
(37:47):
pots as a promotions director at Maryland. In nineteen seventy nine.
He left a poster in my office and said, quote,
something terrible happens when you don't promote nothing unquote. It's
something I'll never get and have used my entire career.
(38:09):
This podcast series is based on the book Born Ready
The Mixed Legacy of Lambis, published by Go Grady Media.
The series is produced by Go Grady Media and partnership
with Octagon Entertainment. This segment was produced by Davon Grady
and Don Marcus. It was written by Davon Grady and
edited by Don Marcus. The narrator was Don Marcus, with
additional narration by Jamal Williams. Technical production was provided by
(38:31):
Octagon Entertainment. Production assistance was produced by Kevin McNalty, Tina Quagliata,
Lauren Rosh, Georgia Braun, Casey Fair, Jamal Williams, Keelsea Mannix
and Enzo Alvarino. Matt Deversus providing the social media assistance
Special thanks to the University of Maryland and American University
from providing inserts. The Decision Education Foundation as a content
(38:54):
and promotional partner of this podcast series. For more information,
go to Grady Media and the Eighth Side One
This podcast is based in large part of the book
Born Ready, The Mixed Legacy of Lambis. Some quotes are
narrated by Davon Grady, a podcast producer and the author
of the book, from interviews done for the book. Recordings
for these comments were not available. This segment is dedicated
to the memory of Russ Potts, the pioneering sports marketer
for Maryland Athletics, who passed away in December. Pots is
(00:24):
featured in several episodes of the series, including this one.
A short tribute to pots can be heard at the
conclusion of this episode. Maryland is one of the most
puzzling situations I've ever seen. There's no institutional memory, and
without institutional memory, you can't understand what got you there
(00:48):
and what you need to focus on. But to keep
you two at the top. It was significant for the
first year. I think it was really oppressive on all
of us for about a year. It's just unbelievable. I
mean how it affected. It changed the entire university for
(01:11):
for mega years. Miss Weather handled it in no jobs
for us to do so we can generate money for
the teams one time as Weather trying to get us
the mo grass for people we don't know how to
mo grad. We take out the track team pretty much.
(01:32):
To eliminate minorities for non reminue sports, we were we
were hitting fatais for I mean just just say a
couple of years, um, trying to just fight off most
you know, cut or rehiminated. I'll tell you how bad
(01:54):
it was. I'm from Boston and when I went home,
if I wore anything that said Maryland on it, I
was a pariah. Was kind of laughed at by every
university in the country. Uh. And then when len Bias died,
(02:14):
all of a sudden, it became more of hey, um,
just like any other medical procedure, there's more checks and balances.
I think back then it was how how could this
have happened? But now it's like, we can all see
how this could happen. This could have happened to any
of us. We've learned the lesson, but you have to
(02:37):
move on. Now you've seen really like a full circle.
We we we embrace it and we're proud of it.
And lenn is a legend and an icon UH in
the athletic department. Now I think the message is there,
what happened tragic, Let's make sure it never happens again.
(03:01):
Up next on Lumbias and Mixed Legacy, a dark Class.
In the last five months of ninety six, the University
of Maryland athletic department had a dramatically transformed Its athletic
director was done, so was its men's basketball coach and
(03:22):
football coach, all victims of the fallout from the death
of Lambias. At the time, Frank Costello was the strength
coach for Maryland. He was an All American high jumper
in the nineteen sixties and was the school's head coach
of the track and field team in the late nineteen seventies.
He saw firsthand how changes altered the character of Maryland's
(03:42):
athletic department. There was a job and a family kind
of atmosphere working at the university. But then after Lenny died,
of course you got this tragedy and like you said,
the dominants just spelled. Plus you had this shadow falling
over here what happened to Lenny, So it was a
(04:03):
lot different. Russ Potts was the athletic department's first marketing director.
Maryland needed a healer. They needed a person with compassion
and love and kindness, and that kind of personality and
uh I felt that they could have built on people
who were loyal to the program and uh and worked
(04:27):
their way out of that. But it has been one
massive challenge after another at Maryland, which saddens me. Saddens
me a great deal, and they've run through so many
coaches and so many administrators, many of whom don't have
any idea about the heritage there. Heritage was not on
(04:50):
the mind of Robert Sturts when he took over as
interim athletic director on November. Starts work previously as a
university vice chancellor for administrative affairs. A big part of
his mission was to suggest changes within the athletic department.
Many were made. By the end of January of nine,
(05:12):
seven seventeen staff positions were eliminated. Those moves were a
result of an independent department review done by Michigan Athletic
Director Don Cannon. He focused on the department structure and efficiency.
Among those acts was Jim Deach, part of that Maryland
family within the department, he was a former Maryland athlete.
(05:33):
Each was also lacrosse and soccer coach at Maryland. Further,
he led the academic support unit when bias died and
was soon after moved to the ticket office. Also removed
the department's former marketing director, members of the sports information
office and maintenance staff. Sue Tyler was an assistant athletic
director at Maryland and a coach for women's field hockey
(05:54):
and lacrosse during that first year. Either it was just
such a crisis time that you're all worry about your
own space and so um we were all worried about
our own team and our own existence and our own
survival for a little bit. It would have wait about
two two and a half years, three year, two years.
I'd say it was significant For the first year. I
(06:15):
think it was really oppressive on all of us for
about a year. The moves helped the department deal with
a one million dollar deficit from that year. About a
quarter of that amount came from payouts to basketball coach
left to Giselle and athletic director Dick Doll. There was
also a reduced revenue from football and basketball games into
(06:37):
that challenging environment. Step Bob Wade, Maryland's new basketball coach.
Wade left one of the best high school programs in
the country, Dunbar in Baltimore. Sue Tyler noticed the ghost
of former coach left to Giselle lingered during the transition.
I think it was a really tough situation for him
to walk into. And it was a tough situation coming
(06:58):
from such a high per file high school program and
thinking that it's going to be similar to what you
had in high school and it's dramatically different all the
things going on. There were people that were so still
behind Lefty that anybody the next anybody would have been
(07:20):
had a tough time. Derrick Lewis was a junior on
the team at You're in Maryland. I think anyone coming
in with the situation that bias is going to be
over the Molly Glassman covered Wade as a high school
coach and at Maryland while she was a reporter for
the Baltimore Evening Sun. Bob is a very proud man,
(07:42):
very strong in his belief in himself. Um. He accomplished
a hell of a lot at Dunbar, and I think
as time went on at Maryland, the frustration of not
being his not being in control all of everything, did
(08:03):
lead him to kind of, you know, sequester himself apart
from from the rest of the department. Wads tumultuous three
years at Maryland are explained in more detail and segment
two of section two in this series. That segment explains
the evolution of Maryland basketball from the tragedy of len
bias his death to the triumph of the Terms winning
(08:25):
their first national title in two thousand two. You're listening
to Len Bias the Mixed Legacy on the Eighth Side Network.
A couple of months after Wade completed his first year
at Maryland, the athletic department had a new athletic director
who was Lou Perkins, and he appeared to be a
(08:47):
good fit. Perkins had served in the same role at
which to State University. There, he guided the program through
an n c A probation caused by recruiting violations from
its basketball teams. When he was introduced as Maryland's athletic
director at a press conference, Perkins said he planned to
institute an extensive policy manual for coaches to read and sign.
(09:08):
Tyler remembers that Perkins asked each coach to assign the
manual as an agreement that they understood its content. Some
people thought it was an annoyance and that it was
a cost that wasn't necessary, you know, I was, I
think a couple hundred pages of things how to how
to navigate different issues. Here's an outsider telling us how
(09:28):
to operate. We've been operating here for fifteen, twenty years
or whatever. But I think all in all, it was
a It was a good idea. I think pretty much
laid it out very clearly, so that if somebody didn't
do a step, you would say, well, you didn't, you
missed step three, already missed. You missed step three or
four and five, and you just went to the end.
(09:48):
Was very worthy and very long, but something like that
needed to happen. The manual was one of many changes
instituted Maryland during perkins time as athletic director. Standards for
current athletes were tightened. Athletes had to maintain certain grade
point averages to remain eligible. Admission for athletes who were
(10:09):
considered at risk academically were cut by more than half. Further,
the ceiling for special admissions for football players was reduced
from thirty to ten. Restrictions were clearly affecting the quality
of players Maryland could recruit. The nine eight seven season
began one of the worst stretches in the one hundred
nineteen year history of Maryland football, with the Terrapin's recording
(10:30):
a winning season just once in eight seasons. Podcast producer
Davion Grady recalled the story that Joe Krievac, who took
over as the team's football coach when Bobby Ross left
following the nine eight seven season, told him for his
book about Lynn Bias. Maryland prepared to play Penn State
in early November. In Penn State was ranked number nine
(10:53):
in the country at the time. It was during Krieback's
final years head coach. The Terms had a two and
six record. Prievak found out Monday before the game that
a few of his players had not maintained the grade
point average minimum they were ruled ineligible. Kreevak appealed to
athletic director Andy Geiger, he had replaced Perkins. Rievac said, quote,
(11:17):
I asked him, what are we doing this for. It
doesn't violate any anti double A rules, He said, coach,
you just have to live with it. But he didn't
have to play the game on Saturday. Maryland lost the
game seven, and then they lost their last two games
to finish two and nine. It was Krievak's worst record
as head coach Tyler the assistant athletic director. He calls
(11:41):
a somber mood prevailing within athletics during the early years
of the transition. And I know some folks did say
that he felt like they didn't want to go in
any more day to day. They just wanted to go
to their field or there the gym and go home.
We used to do a lot of things as coaches
together and that too for a while to get that
(12:02):
back of you know, going someplace for a drink, set
up Halloween party one time and half the department was there,
and we have Christmas parties and we didn't do that.
We didn't do that for a couple of years. We
didn't together as coaches and party. We didn't get together,
just didn't happen. We just all were doing our own thing.
(12:23):
But we had been prior to that. We had we
had been a good, fun, fun loving staff and um,
as I said, going to parties and had parties and
supported each other by going to each other's games. I
don't think that we went to other people's games. The
somber mood extended to the athletes as well. Here's as
he's a door a senior receiver on the football team
(12:46):
the year after Bias died. You know the cartoon Minus
who walked around with the cloud. That was it. That's
what you felt like. As the football team struggled, the
men's basketball team was enduring n c A sanctions caused
by coach Bob Wade. The sanctions took effect after Gary
Williams's first season taking over from Wade, and the terms
(13:06):
could not play in postseason games the next two years. This,
along with the football teams continued mediocrity, reduced athletic department
revenue by nearly three million dollars. As a result, the
department endured a major restructuring, affecting mostly non revenue sports.
In May, Perkins placed all sports and four tiers. He
(13:28):
also reduced scholarships in eight of its twenty three varsity
sports and reduced scholarship money by seventy and five others.
Perkins blamed the moves on the n c A sanctions
against the men's basketball team. Luke Perkins was hired because
he had a background and a knowledge of um n
(13:50):
c A rules, regulations and academic support and that he
did that that was and he was also given finances
and resources in order to make those things happen, and
so the the new academic support and the increase in
number of coaches of assistant athletic directors so that there
(14:14):
were there was more supervision of coaches, more supervision of
student athletes, um more paperwork, but just more accountability. In general,
the team's most affected with those in the lowest tier.
They included men's and women's indoor and outdoor track and field,
men's golf, women's gymnastics, and men's and women's tennis. Those
(14:36):
teams offered no scholarships and competed locally except for acc competition.
By this time, a once familiar mood within athletics was gone.
A sense of self preservation took over. Frank Costello was
Maryland's track coach in the mid and late nineteen seventies.
He was later Maryland's first strength coach until nine. It
(14:57):
took years to get any type of smoothness going, and
the just the attitude around the athletic department was uh
just not the same, well, maybe sadder or bleaker or
just uh not as joyous to be around. Bob Nelligan,
(15:22):
the head coach of women's gymnastics, remembered an uncomfortable discussion
with Perkins about the fate of his program. Louke Perkins
called me in and said, you know what, you're on
contract through the next year. You don't have to coach.
I'll find something for you to do. Just let it ride.
(15:44):
And I said, I'll have to get back to you
on that, and the kids said, no, we're fighting. So
that was all of a sudden this all the other
teams jumped on Lord. Everybody started going around and lobbying.
How close were you to losing the program? After lent too.
(16:07):
That was with Perkins, and then when Geiger came in,
we were under the gun again. Nelegan is referring to
Andy Geiger, who succeeded Perkins as athletic director in the
early nineteen nineties. Despite posting a string of winning records,
including his best team in he and his gymnasts had
(16:27):
to think of clever ways to raise money and keep
the program alive. We parked cars for football. We would
go out in the rain with flags and escort cards
to this to their spots. We cleaned coal Field House
(16:49):
after every basketball game. And believe me, when Nachos came
on board, that was the worst ever UM we We
did everything that there was to do. I could remember
one year we the football team had gone to the
(17:13):
Cherry Bowl all of these nylon jackets that had Cherry
Bowl on the on the chest, and they were smalls
and extra smalls, and he was like, what the heck
am I supposed to do with these things? And we
put a big Maryland patch over the Cherry Bold patch,
(17:39):
and my kids thought it was the greatest thing since
sliced bread. That was a part of the warm up.
Sportscaster Bonnie Bernstein was an academic All American when she
competed on the gymnastics team from We didn't really think
about how tedious some of the tasks we were doing.
We just knew that ultimately it was help in cash
(18:02):
in the team's collective pockets that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
But whether it was cleaning stadiums, working parking lots, working
n c A tournament games at Coldfield's house, whatever we
needed to do to earn a little extra money, we
were going to do because it was really all about
team Bernstein selfie impact of the cuts directly. She made
(18:26):
the team as a walk on freshman and had hoped
for scholarship soon after, and then that was all of
a sudden off the table. I had to figure out
a way to make the finances work. So I was
working three different jobs and going to school and competing.
Bernstein considered transferring. Then she wrote a letter to athletic
director Andy Geiger. We went up there for a meeting,
(18:47):
and Andy said, UM, I read your letter and sitting
here on my desk, and I'm scared to death because
I'm just thinking he's going to somehow take offense to
my having to leave. And he said, You've got your scholarship.
To this day, I have no idea how it was funded,
(19:08):
but it truly saved me from having to transfer. It
made it realize that, you know, we have to find
a way to survive, and the only way to survive
is to stick together and to be gwitty and to
be a resourceful. Despite being in the top tier of
the athletic program and one of the country's perennial top
(19:29):
twenty teams, women's basketball also needed to find creative ways
to stay fully funded. One was to have players sell
programs at football games, an idea that was not embraced
by many members of the team. Two top players transferred
after their freshman year because, according to coach Chris Weller,
they felt the work was beneath them. Vicky Bullett was
an All American from Maryland. She was among those on
(19:51):
the team that referred to themselves as survivors. Miss well
I had a little in not jobs for us, the
dude so we can generate money for the team. So
well one time as well to try to get us
the more grass for people. We don't know how to
mow grass. She just wanted us to get sweaty and
worked out. Bill Goodman was an Atlantic Coast Conference triple
(20:14):
jump champion from Maryland in the mid nineties seventies. Through
that decade, Maryland was the dominant program in the a SEC,
winning twenty five consecutive conference titles. As the track and
field coach, after Bias died, Goodman was forced to lobby
Perkins to keep the team intact. To support his cause,
He made the point that there were more minority students
(20:36):
on his team than in any other non revenue sport.
So if you take out the track team pretty much
to eliminate minorities certa non revenue sports, we we we were.
We were in sense for I mean, let's just say,
a couple of years, uh trying to just flight off
(20:57):
the uh most you know, gott and more reliminated. You know,
it's like trying to try it off a battle and
you get rid of all your change, then you get
rid of all your CONSUCA, and you get rid of
all your rifles. You down to listen, you know, it's
just getting worse than worse and worse and worse. During
(21:18):
the lean financial times and the restructuring after the death
of Bias, the mood of the coaches was a stark
departure from earlier times, and it reflected the mental state department.
Jack Jackson, Maryland's baseball coach for some three decades, had
a meeting with Perkins soon after he took over as
athletic director. Here's podcast producer David U. Grady we talked
(21:39):
with Jackson for his book about lam Bias. Jackson told
me we started talking about loyalty. He said, there ain't
such a thing as loyalty anymore. He said, anybody who
stays at a job more than five years is lazy.
I said, how about the guy who likes his job,
what does he do? Jackson retired as coach in ninete.
(22:02):
The wrestling team failed to win the a SEC title
only once from nineteen fifty four to nineteen seventy four,
and was starting to again show signs of prominence shortly
after Bias died. The nineteen eight sevent team featured three
All Americans. Still, the team had its scholarship aid reduced
by f John mckugh, Maryland wrestler, was the coach at
(22:24):
the time. John mqugh told me we were finally rolling
and able to recruit the big time guys. Then all
of a sudden, they cut our legs out from under us.
For three years, I didn't sign anybody. Still, the team
avoided a losing record of the early nineteen nineties and
finished second twice in the conference during that time. The
death of Bias also impacted the image of Maryland athletics
(22:48):
well beyond College Park. Gymnastics coach Bob Nelligan recalled uncomfortable
reactions he faced in his hometown. You've got to remember
we were under the spotlight for a long time. I'll
tell you how bad it was. I'm from Boston, and
(23:08):
when I went home, if I wore anything that said
Maryland on it, I was a pariah. Lenny Bias was
the savior of the Boston Celtics. He was the lifeblood
that was gonna hold that program to national prominence. And
(23:28):
they never let us forget that. They would do everything
but spit on you. What kind of drug school do
you have going on down there? You know, I just
you know, tough stuff. At the time of Biases death,
scrutiny of drug use among athletes in the United States
was escalating. The n c A announcements new drug testing
(23:50):
plan in the summer of It began in the fall
of Maryland had been testing its athletes since nineteen eighty. J. J. Bush,
an athletic trainer at Maryland's two, started the program along
with the university's health center. They copied protocols from programs
at the University of Florida, among others. Here's Bush, It
(24:12):
was totally random. We just at the time when you know,
we just sort of gave every kid a number and
then picked the numbers out of a hat. If your
number came up, your coach or in the basketball's case,
our director of operations was sent uh a list so
(24:35):
and so needs to report to the health center between
such and such a time, on such and such a date.
If it was a positive, they would do a second
test to make sure sure it was not a false positive,
and then if the person was positive, the coach was
notified by the director of the health center. The first
(24:57):
positive you had to go to a counseling session, and
if you came up with a second positive, you had
to sit out of a period of time from practice
or beat away from the team, maybe a week, I
forget exactly, and then the third time that was it.
You know you were done. Bush recalls only one athlete
(25:17):
testing positive amongst the four teams he worked with after
testing started. As he said in abdor Rove played his
final season with the Maryland football team after lended to
him the drug test was not very complicated. I mean
it was a urine test. You're go into bathroom and
you bring a cup out and your hand it to
that to test her, and you're out of there. It's
(25:38):
pretty simple. Former Maryland Jim that s Bonnie Bernstein feels
testing may have steered athletes away from abusing drugs. There
was a lot of random drug testing going on. The
reality is, when you're dealing with eighteen to twenty two
year old kids who are being independent, and many of
whom who were away from home for the first time,
(25:59):
that you're gonna experiment and you're gonna party, and you're
gonna roll your eyes at a lot of the coaches
Messa Jane about gearing clear of drugs, but the fact
that we always had to be on alert about random
drug tests, I think probably kept more student athletes honest
than you you might think. Gary Williams sort of changing
(26:20):
drug testing procedures while coaching at Ohio State. When Bias died,
drug testing was kind of laughed at by every university
in the country. UH, and then when Lynd Bias died,
all of a sudden, it became more of hey, um,
just like any other medical procedure. There, there's more checks
and balances things like that on the procedure. You know,
(26:42):
you're almost forced into it if you're an n G
double A Division one power conference school, because everybody saw
what it did to the University of Maryland and so
obviously you want to avoid that. So they really stepped
it up, and I think that that's the biggest benefit
to UH come out of the Lund Bias situation. I'm
(27:05):
sure that helped a lot of kids around that time
get on the proper path towards success. The death of
Bias and the fact that Marylyn was drug testing as
athletes also impacted recruiting for more than a decade. Opposing
coaches used biases death as a weapon to persuade parents
do not send their children to college park. Here's nelligan,
(27:28):
It just was thrown at us. Uh. It was hard
making a positive as a coach and a recruiter. How
do I tell a parent that, oh, yeah, if your
daughter comes to my school, she was gonna be drug
(27:48):
tested several times a year. Why would I want to
send my kid there? According to Gary Williams, opposing coaches
would make sure as to remind top players that Maryland
was a school where it's best basketball player died from
drug abuse. Uh. It was. It was a very difficult time. Uh,
and people were really suspicious of the University of Maryland
(28:11):
and basketball program. So, you know, I know recruits that
we were trying to recruit were made aware of just
about every article that was ever printed. You go into
a home and there will be articles, uh on the
Washington Post in State North Carolina or whatever, sitting on
the coffee table. And obviously they were sent by someone
(28:33):
you were recruiting against another university. You're listening to Lem
Bias the Mixed Legacy on the Eighth Side Network. Current
Maryland head football coach Mike Locksley grew up in Washington,
d C. He was a senior in high school when
Bias died. Locksley worked as an assistant to Ralph Reagent
in the early two thousands and so, as what typically
(28:56):
happens when there's tragedies and there's corrections, sometimes you overcorrect.
The tough part for us was, you know, being able
to get a marginal student into So now you're recruiting
against other schools that don't have these standards where they
limit how many you know, marginal students you can bring in.
And for US, now that makes recruiting that much harder
(29:19):
because you have to recruit a guy, but then you
have to also find a guy that has the grades,
uh to get in without you know, being considered a
marginal student, which would you know, then put them in
a place where they had to come into through a
bridge program and take extra courses. And there were a
lot of people that were turned away. They were good
players that, uh, we couldn't get in the school because
(29:43):
of this uh how the standards had changed to to
push our academic standards up a little bit. Still, Maryland
Athletics has managed to thrive in many ways in the
decades following the death of Bias, Led by a combined
twenty championships from field hockey, women's lacrosse turps teams have
won twenty nine national championships since nine. They include titles
(30:05):
by men's and women's basketball, and a few by the
men's soccer team. It would take decades from Maryland Athletics
collectively to finally accept the legacy of Bias. He was
not inducted into Maryland's Athletics Hall of Fame until two
thousand fourteen. We will explain that in more detail in
a later episode. Lefty Giselle, Maryland's coach when Bias died,
(30:27):
finally earned his Maryland Athletics Hall of Fame honor in
two thousand two. That was sixteen years after he left
the program. Maryland Athletics featured pictures of Bias and promotional
materials when it celebrated a hundred years of basketball in
two thousand nineteen. That would have seemed unimaginable just ten
years earlier. Brett Nelligan was five years old when Bias died.
(30:50):
At the time, his father, Bob, was Maryland's gymnastics coach.
Brett returned to Maryland in two thousand three as an
assistant to his father on the team. He took over
his head coach in two thousand and nine. He has
seen a transition to the acceptance of the Len Bias
legacy within Maryland athletics. And when I when I came back,
it just wasn't spoken about, you know, we just that
(31:12):
was a part of our history that was I think
still difficult for us as an athletic department, as a
fan base, as a as a community. It was just
too hard for us to to to really embrace to
talk about. But now you've seen really like a full circle.
We we we embrace it and we're proud of it.
(31:34):
And Lenn is a legend and an icon uh in
the athletic department now. And the bottom line is he's
still I think one of the greatest athletes to ever
wear Maryland jersey. And there's there's nothing that can change that.
What do you think changed it? Why all of a
sudden did they start to accept it? But I think
(31:54):
back then it was how how could this have happened?
But now it's like, we can all see how this
could happen. This could have happened to any of us.
And that's my point to my team, is this, this
could have happened to anyone us. We all make mistakes
every There's no one that's immune to making mistakes in
their life. So I just think there's a a greater
(32:15):
level of understanding in our in our world, on our
society now. Johnny Hollanday has been Maryland's played by play
announcers for forty years. A few others understand the transition
toward acceptance of Lynn's legacy within Maryland Athletics. And it's
a whole new ballgame now, a whole new generation of fans.
I've got grandkids that never heard of by us, and
(32:37):
then they go to YouTube and watch video highlights and
they say, oh, he was pretty good. I said, yeah,
a little better than pretty good. Well, he could jump,
he could shoot, he could score, he could run. Yeah,
And I think that's the best tribute to him. It's
to see people walking around at games at other revenge
(32:57):
what number thirty four and by us from the back
of their jersey in early December, Maryland held Led Bias
Night during a home game against Virginia Tech. It was
the first time Maryland dedicated one game to bias. Thousands
of free Led Bias Number thirty four jerseys were handed
out to fans. Thousands of number thirty four LED Biased
(33:18):
jerseys filled Exfinity Center, Maryland's home court, in a sea
of yellow and red bias. His name adorned the backs
of each jersey. The Bias family was also recognized during
(33:40):
the game, as he has done for Maryland since the
late nineties seventies, Johnny Holiday before radio play by play
(34:01):
for that game, people learned the lesson. We know it's
cost people jobs. We don't cost a young man's life.
But you have to move on, and you move on
by correcting mistakes that were done years and years ago.
I think the messages there what happened tragic. Let's make
sure it never happens again. Next. Online bias and mixed legacy,
(34:26):
mandatory minimums and maximum impact. Have the death of bias
affected a nation. The prep problem has become a crack
crisis and it's spreading nationwide. There was a misperception that
crack cocaine was something different chemically than what powder cocaine was. Yeah,
before the arrest, my life was I thought was perfect.
(34:47):
Everything I did, I did it with my children, boy,
Scout girl, Scout. Uh going to move it. I was
working at the Hospital of the Nerves because you know,
everything gets put down the draint at that moment this story,
there's no checks and balances. Once that prosecutors prosecutors sides
you're the bad person, it's over for you. And so
that that really tilted the system in a way that
(35:10):
gave the prosecutor too much palace. So the way Lyn
Bias operated in my head was it was almost like
a fucking ghost. But I didn't really know who he
was until I went to prison. I concluded that Lynn
biases death was the single most important date in the
history of drugs in the United States since the founding
(35:33):
of Alcoholics. Anonymous uh in June. Doesn't save lives, doesn't
reduce crime, So what does it do is passing. It
wasn't just a tragedy that we lost one great person.
We we lost a lot of great people. This is
(35:58):
Dave and Grady, executive user of this podcast series US
promised at the beginning of this episode, here's a tribute
to the late Russ Potts, who was featured in this
episode and others. It is presented by Chip Zimmer, a
former sports marketing director at Maryland and the author of
the book The Battle of the Potomac, a century long
(36:20):
football rivalry between the West Virginia Mountaineers and the Maryland Terrapins.
Zimmer was also my boss when I worked as an
intern in sports marketing at Maryland in nine. In a
late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, Maryland's new athletic director,
Jim Keo made some bold moves to revive the Turps
(36:41):
football and basketball programs. Football hadn't been relevant since Jim
Tatum left in nineteen fifty five, and basketball had been floundering.
New hires Jerry Claybourne and football and left Utri Zell
and basketball helped the programs achieve national prominence within a decade.
But perhaps as importantly, Kio in seventy hired Rust Pots
in nineteen sixty four Maryland graduate as the n C
(37:04):
Double A's first sports promotion director. Potts became known as
an innovator, a pioneer, and a maverick. If Bill Veck
was a godfather of baseball promotions, then Russ Potts was
as equal for college promotions. He turned Maryland football games
into events for the entire family. Multiple giveaways by corporate
sponsors became the norm. Cannons were fired as the terps
(37:25):
ran onto the field. Paratroopers delivered game ball at the
fifty yard line. The programs resembled telephone books, chalk full
of advertisers, tens of thousands of red and white go terps,
go bumper sticker adorned auto bumpers throughout the state of Maryland.
Dozens of billboards, and hundreds of thousands of pocket schedules
blanketed the state. I had the monumental task of succeeding
(37:47):
pots as a promotions director at Maryland. In nineteen seventy nine.
He left a poster in my office and said, quote,
something terrible happens when you don't promote nothing unquote. It's
something I'll never get and have used my entire career.
(38:09):
This podcast series is based on the book Born Ready
The Mixed Legacy of Lambis, published by Go Grady Media.
The series is produced by Go Grady Media and partnership
with Octagon Entertainment. This segment was produced by Davon Grady
and Don Marcus. It was written by Davon Grady and
edited by Don Marcus. The narrator was Don Marcus, with
additional narration by Jamal Williams. Technical production was provided by
(38:31):
Octagon Entertainment. Production assistance was produced by Kevin McNalty, Tina Quagliata,
Lauren Rosh, Georgia Braun, Casey Fair, Jamal Williams, Keelsea Mannix
and Enzo Alvarino. Matt Deversus providing the social media assistance
Special thanks to the University of Maryland and American University
from providing inserts. The Decision Education Foundation as a content
(38:54):
and promotional partner of this podcast series. For more information,
go to Grady Media and the Eighth Side One
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