[Editor’s note: This is the eleventh part of a bi-weekly series that will run through May chronicling significant events in the university’s history in honor of its 150th anniversary this year.]

On the evening of Wednesday, June 18, 1986, then-university provost Brit Kirwan sat on his couch and watched television footage of the university’s most celebrated basketball player Len Bias being drafted into the NBA by the Boston Celtics the day before.

Kirwan recalls video clips of Celtics President Red Auerbach slipping a jersey on Bias, who later beamed for cameras while wearing a green Celtics hat and a beige suit.

The next morning, as Kirwan walked from the parking lot to his office in the Main Administration building, a co-worker stopped him.

“Well, did you hear about Len Bias?”

Kirwan, a naturally jovial and genuine man, smiled widely and exclaimed, “Yes, isn’t that wonderful news?”

“No, no, no. He’s dead.”

Kirwan’s smile disappeared, and a typically empty summer day on the campus became the backdrop for a media circus.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Bias’ death from a cocaine overdose – the day that forced the university to reform its athletics program and plunged the university into one of its bleakest eras. What emerged from the Bias tragedy was a big lesson for the university that sparked a series of changes affecting how the Athletics Department handles its players even today.

Following his death, two top athletics administrators resigned, the Athletics Department plunged into millions of dollars of debt, and interest from thousands of prospective students waned. Many accepted into the university decided not to attend that fall.

The university fell under heavy media scrutiny while mourning the death of its beloved basketball star, a young and healthy man with so much potential who died in his dorm room early on June 19, 1986.

“It’s one of those moments in life,” Kirwan said in a recent interview. “when someone has said something, and at some level, you understand the words, but you can’t really accept them because it’s just impossible. And, of course, it wasn’t impossible.”

“You never saw any indication that he might be involved with drugs,” said Len Elmore, a former Terps basketball player and current ESPN basketball analyst. “In the end, the problem that everyone had here was this magnificent athlete at the prime of his life … and suddenly his life was snuffed out, essentially self-inflicted.”

“Everyone was amazed at his level of skill, he was the top draft pick. If you look at all the great players of Maryland, Len Bias might have been the best, the most talented player Maryland ever had,” he said.

In the fallout, the university appointed two task forces, one of which was chaired by physics professor J. Robert Dorfman. The Dorfman Report suggested reforms for athletic policies, the most important of which were stricter guidelines for athletes’ admissions, higher minimum academic standards for them to remain eligible to play, random drug testing and a better support staff for tutoring and guidance.

The university’s measures were to ensure the average academic quality of athletes followed the rest of the student body’s, said Raymond Johnson, a mathematics professor who served on the Dorfman task force.

“What we discovered is in the interest of competitiveness, we have gradually let the academic standards slip,” Johnson said last week about the time following Bias’ death. “It’s incredible how interested the press was. The problem is if [the media goes] away, then it’s going to go back to business as usual.”

The graduation rate for all athletes who graduate in six years was at an all-time high of 70 percent for school year 2004-05, compared to the student body at 73 percent. The football team alone hit 79 percent. In 1990 the graduation rate was 65 percent for all athletes, compared to 57 percent for the student body, according a Board of Regents report.

No. 34

Some say Bias was the best basketball player to ever put on a Maryland jersey. After Bias’s death at 22 years old, the university’s celebrated men’s basketball coach “Lefty” Driesell called him the ACC’s best player ever. News reports said people should remember Bias for his slam dunks, perfect jump shots and the chants of “Len-ny! Len-ny! Len-ny!” that echoed in Cole Field House.

But many will remember him for that night in Washington Hall.

On Wednesday night, Bias came back to his dorm to celebrate the best news of his life. That Tuesday, he was selected as No. 2 pick in the NBA draft by the Boston Celtics, one of the best teams in the nation at the time.

Auerbach said the team had been seeking to recruit the All-American for the past three years and Bias told reporters he always wanted to play for the team. When Bostonians learned of Bias’ death Thursday morning, they were just as devastated as fans in the Baltimore and Washington area.

“Talking to some of my friends who are Celtics fans, they don’t believe the Celtics ever recovered from the Len Bias’ death,” Elmore said. “The Celtics never really had any real success since then.”

Bias would have been a millionaire after negotiating a deal with Reebok and signing a rookie contract. After flying back from Boston, Bias and his friends, including teammates Terry Long and David Gregg and friend Brian Tribble, celebrated by snorting a “mound” of cocaine in Bias’ dorm room, The Diamondback reported.

Bias, who had done cocaine a few times in the past, had walked into the dorm around 2 a.m., woke up his sleeping roommate and pulled another off the phone to say “let’s party,” The Diamondback reported.

According to a story in The Washington Post published on the 10th anniversary of his death, Bias had snorted five grams of cocaine – one gram of cocaine was considered the recreational amount.

Around 3 a.m., a friend told Bias he had enough, but the athlete replied that he was strong, The Post reported. Around 6 a.m., Bias started to shake and collapsed, and Tribble called 911. Just before 9 a.m., he was pronounced dead.

Four days later, 11,000 people came to bid Bias farewell at his memorial service in Cole Field House.

“No one will ever wear No. 34 again in a Maryland uniform,” Driesell reportedly said at the memorial service.

The audience gave Bias a two and a half minute standing ovation and heard from speakers, including Auerbach, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and university Chancellor John B. Slaughter, the equivalent of today’s university president.

“I’ve been with the Celtics for 37 years,” Auerbach said at the funeral, according to The Diamondback. “And in those 37 years, no one, not even Larry Bird, got the reception that Lenny Bias got. He would have been a great star, there’s no question about it in my mind.”

Lingering Lessons

The media scrutiny ensued as reporters descended on the campus, searching for flaws in the athletics program leading up to Bias’ death. While the issues they uncovered weren’t unique to the university, Maryland became the poster child for troubled collegiate athletics.

“Maryland became a symbol with all the problems of sports,” Elmore said. “At a time of such a tragedy, everyone looks for scapegoats.”

Kirwan, now the University System of Maryland Chancellor, said the current coverage at Duke University, where members of the men’s lacrosse team are being accused of raping a stripper at a team party, does not even compare to that of Bias’s death.

“As intense as that is, it doesn’t compare to the scrutiny we were under [after] Len Bias,” Kirwan said. “The chain of events [is] hardly believable. It almost sounds like it was a Hollywood tragedy because you couldn’t imagine things actually occurring this way in life.”

Twenty years later, many of the athletics regulations now in place were born out of the Bias tragedy.

Before his death, the Athletics Department could admit an unlimited number of recruits, regardless of whether their academic qualifications met university standards. In 1986, the university accepted 48 athletes whose grades did not meet academic standards.

After the Dorfman Report, the Athletics Department was only allowed to admit 18 freshman and three transfer students per year who were not up to par academically, The Post reported.

Before the tragedy, the admissions office cooperated extensively with the Athletics Department to ensure their top picks were admitted. Afterwards, the relationship was severed and the GPA requirements for athletes became more strict than those of the NCAA.

While many of the students on the campus now were just babies when Bias died, those who remember him say his death wasn’t in vain.

“The university has made important reforms that have improved the quality of the athletic programs,” Kirwan said. “And I think we’ve gotten to a very, quite frankly, enviable place.”

TIMELINE | THE LEN BIAS RESPONSE

June 17, 1986 – The Boston Celtics select Bias as the 2nd pick in the NBA Draft in New York.

June 18, midnight – Bias returns to his Washington Hall dorm room.

June 19, 6:32 a.m. – A caller identifying himself as Brian Tribble, a friend of Bias’, calls 911. “Len Bias needs help,” the caller says. “He’s not breathing right.”

June 19, 8:50 a.m. – After attempts to stimulate his heart fail, Bias is pronounced dead at Leland Memorial Hospital in Riverdale.

June 19, late afternoon – At a news conference in the crowded foyer of Cole Field House, former men’s basketball coach “Lefty” Driesell calls Bias “the greatest basketball player that ever played in the Atlantic Coast Conference.”

June 20 – University police find a clear plastic bag of cocaine in Bias’ leased Nissan 300ZX.

June 23 – At a packed evening memorial at Cole Field House, Driesell announces that Bias’ jersey will be retired, an honor unprecedented in Terrapin basketball history.

June 24 – Wendy Whittemore, men’s basketball team academic counselor, resigns, saying education is not a top priority of Driesell.

June 30 – University chancellor John Slaughter receives approval from the University Board of Regents to appoint two blue-ribbon task forces, on athletes’ academic performance and drug policies on the campus.

July 30 – Slaughter accepts Athletic Director Dick Dull’s recommendation that Long and Gregg be suspended from the team indefinitely.

Aug. 5 – Slaughter announces plans to test student athletes for drug use at least three times a year.

Aug. 13 – Campus officials cancel or postpone all men’s basketball games scheduled for the fall semester.

Aug. 26 – Brit Kirwan, academic affairs vice chancellor and provost, announces a diagnostic testing program for basketball players and all athletes whose cumulative GPA falls below 2.2.

Oct. 10 – Slaughter presents the task force’s report on athletes’ academic reforms to the University System of Maryland Board of Regents in a closed-door meeting. The 43-page report made 60 recommendations and concluded, “The university has not been vigilant in safeguarding the quality of the academic program of student athletes.”

Oct. 14 – Slaughter asked athletic directors and administrators from other universities to investigate the Athletic Department.

Oct. 28 – Citing the need for an overhaul of priorities in the university’s basketball program, Slaughter accepted the forced resignation of Coach Lefty Driesell and reassigned him as an assistant athletic director.

Contact reporter Laurie Au at lauriedbk@gmail.com.