College Park--The athletic director talks of jump shots and jazz standards, and, suddenly, it all makes sense, this spring filled with hope and anticipation at the University of Maryland.
If you can follow the musical feints and timeless beauty of jazz, you can appreciate Andy Geiger's first seven months as Maryland's athletic director. He is a jazz buff and saxophone player by inclination, a jock administrator by profession. He improvises and follows rules, delegates authority and establishes goals, yearns to create a timeless standard and accumulate national championships.
It works in music. It can work in sports.
When Geiger became the Maryland athletic director last October, he inherited a department that endured nearly five years of unsettling news and unfavorable publicity. Devastated by the 1986 death of basketball star Len Bias, Maryland's program had been in a free fall ever since.
From his perch as athletic director at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif., Geiger followed Maryland's athletic descent. And yet, he was willing to come east to solve Maryland's festering problems.
"There was a siege mentality here," Geiger said. "Everything was focused inward, not outward. People felt besieged by the campus. There was a we-they attitude. The campus still feels athletics have caused damage to the university. There is still a feeling of, 'When will those people stop hurting us?' "
Under Geiger's careful guidance, Maryland's long athletic nightmare may be ending. During his reign, he has crafted a new image for a department that was viewed as a campus pariah.
Geiger moved swiftly to defuse some of the issues that bedeviled his predecessor, Lew Perkins. The jazz buff improvised. The athletic director played by the rules.
During his first week at Maryland, Geiger resolved a minor rules infraction that was threatening to paralyze the men's basketball program. Three months on the job, and he re-signed head football coach Joe Krivak to a four-year contract, and maneuvered the football team into its first bowl appearance in five years.
"Andy has come in here and created an atmosphere of trust that was not here before," men's basketball coach Gary Williams said.
Even more important, Geiger reopened communication between the athletic department and the academic community.
"Andy can be thought of as a colleague, rather than someone who has been brought in to run a sideshow," said Bruce Fretz, a psychology professor and chair of the Faculty Senate.
Praise for Geiger is nearly unanimous. Although he is a man in the midst of a honeymoon, it may be instructive to recall that Perkins, too, enjoyed favorable early reviews before getting bogged down in the day-to-day struggle of operating the athletic department.
"Andy's first few months here have been remarkable," Maryland President William E. Kirwan said. "He has restored confidence and elevated the image of the athletic department. By the dint of his personality, he has pulled people together."
But where is the program headed? The territory is uncharted. Rules are there to be followed. But this athletic jam session is running on instinct.
*
Geiger is one of those people who lumber when they walk. He takes over a room, a 6-foot-1 1/2 , 230-pound man with thinning brown hair, a slightly jowly, jovial face that could be described as boyish for a 52-year-old and a perfectly modulated voice. He mixes easily with crowds, speaking at a Rotary Club meeting with authority, presiding at a student gathering with understanding.
He appears to be the definition of smooth. He is complex, intellectual even, a man who will raise questions without knowing answers. That is an uncommon trait among men who are trained to become gym teachers.
He wanders into the study of his Silver Spring home late at night and plays the alto saxophone for pleasure. The standards. "Poor Butterfly." "There Will Never Be Another You."
"I started playing about 10 years ago," he said. "I got tired of saying, 'Gee, I wish I had done that.' "
Ever hear an athletic director compare jazz to sports, or talk wistfully about the ability to improvise on the piano or on the run?
But, at heart, Geiger is a jock.
"Really, all I've ever wanted to be is an athletic director," he said. "I was always the guy hanging around the athletic department."
It was at Stanford where Geiger cemented his reputation as one of the ablest athletic administrators in the country. When he arrived on campus in January 1979, the athletic program was unfocused and in debt.
Young, brash, often volatile, Geiger dragged Stanford into the 1980s. He reorganized the department and emphasized the importance of each of the school's 29 sports. In many ways, Geiger assembled the nation's most successful program: His teams won 27 national championships while the athletes matched and, in many cases, exceeded the graduation rate of the general student population.
He also stamped himself a progressive by not blocking student attempts to successfully challenge the NCAA's right to force athletes to sign drug-testing waivers.
But life at Stanford was hardly Camelot by the Bay. Fund-raising, a never-ending battle, drained Geiger. Although he left the school with a $41 million athletic endowment and $10 million investment fund, his department was saddled with a $1.5 million deficit.
His relationship with coaches also was sometimes rocky. He was accused by some coaches of meddling into team affairs. He also failed to solve the puzzle of creating a football power. To his regret, Geiger took over at Stanford one week before football coach Bill Walsh left the school for the San Francisco 49ers.
Had Walsh stayed, Geiger's tenure at Stanford might have met with complete success. Instead, Geiger ran through a series of football coaches -- Rod Dowhower, Paul Wiggin, Jack Elway and Dennis Green.
"I admit that I could never figure football out," Geiger said.
The school appeared in only one bowl game during Geiger's tenure, the 1986 Gator Bowl. By the end of the 1980s, Geiger even had antagonized the school's most famous active athletic alumnus, quarterback John Elway. The reason for their dispute was simple: Geiger fired Elway's father, Jack, after a player revolt during the 1988 season.
Geiger also underwent personal growth at Stanford. He was forced to acknowledge that he was a problem drinker. During a 1986 preseason football tour by Pacific-10 media, Geiger became involved in a heated dispute with a sportswriter, and ended the argument by dumping a glass of wine on the writer's head.
"I remember that it was a California chardonnay," Geiger said.
Mortified by his actions, Geiger said he came to realize he was drinking excessively in response to the pressures of his job. On ++ Aug. 29, 1986, he attended his first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. He said he hasn't had a drink since.
"The period from 1980 to 1986 was a turbulent, difficult time for me," he said. "I went through my version of a mid-life crisis. We're whole people, and I think there is a history of this problem in my family. It was beginning to burst out of me, and I needed to stop it."
Two weeks into his recovery, Geiger and his wife, Eleanor, made a startling decision. A next-door neighbor was sheltering an unwed, pregnant woman who wanted to place her baby for adoption. The pregnant woman asked Eleanor Geiger if she would be interested in adopting the child.
"We were both in our mid-40s and childless," Eleanor Geiger said. "I brought it up to Andy when we were on our way to Texas to open a football season. I told him, 'I know we don't have time to talk about this, but the neighbors want to know if we want to adopt this child. He said, 'Yes, we don't have time to talk about it, but we'll adopt.' "
Six weeks later, Phillip Barlow Geiger, now 4, was born. The Geigers decided to raise another child. After sending 1,500 letters to obstetricians across the country, the couple received a call from a friend who contacted an unwed mother in Los Angeles. The Geigers raced to Los Angeles International Airport, met the pregnant woman in the United Airlines Red Carpet Club, and agreed to adopt the child. The Geigers were present at the birth of their second son, Gregory Stinson Geiger, who will be 3 at the end of May.
"I always wanted to join AARP and the PTA in the same year," Geiger said.
Although he jokes about being a middle-aged father, Geiger seems to take his parental responsibilities seriously. But the Geigers have few illusions about raising adopted children. Gregory is of mixed race, and the Geigers say they are taking great care in his development.
"We have yet to face with a child what it means to be black, or partly black, in the United States," Eleanor Geiger said. "It did take me back when a social worker said, 'How does it feel to be a minority family?' It's going to be a wonderful experience. I think we'll be a better family for it."
With a new family and a secure job, Geiger appeared to be at the pinnacle of personal and professional success at Stanford. But he was growing restless. He had taken the Stanford program as far as he could. It was time for a change and time to return to his roots in the East.
*
The move still is difficult to fathom even seven months later.
Why would Geiger walk away from Stanford, where he constructed what probably was the best athletic program in the country, one that attracted athletes as diverse and talented as John Elway, Janet Evans, Jeff Ballard and Patrick McEnroe, churned out multiple national championship teams, cultivated an Olympic-caliber coaching staff, nurtured genuine students whose interests ranged from fastballs to physics? Why give all that up to come to Maryland?
Maryland?
The place where Bias died, where the men's basketball team was on a three-year NCAA probation, where the football team struggled to reach .500, where the athletic facilities were crumbling, where the non-revenue sports existed on financial crumbs, where the $14 million-a-year athletic department budget was running a cumulative $4 million deficit.
Why risk a glittering reputation on trying to fix a troubled place?
Geiger struggles to find the appropriate answer. He talks of the potential waiting to be unleashed at a university that doesn't even know its own athletic power, the drive to connect fans from opposite ends of the Baltimore-Washington corridor and the tradition and clout of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
But the plain fact is that he wanted a challenge.
"I looked at the Maryland situation for a chance to renew," he said. "I looked at it for a chance to try something different."
When Perkins left Maryland for the University of Connecticut, it took the school six weeks, an uncommonly short period, to find a replacement. Kirwan informally floated the job to Geiger, who had been brought in during summer 1986 to survey the Maryland athletic department in the wake of Bias' death. ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan sealed the Maryland-Geiger marriage.
"I told the Maryland president that if Andy Geiger wanted the job, stop the interview process now; your prayers are answered," Corrigan said. "I told Andy that the job appeared screwed up, but it wasn't, that all Maryland needed was an experienced, loving hand to come in and put it on track."
Geiger, who signed a five-year, $120,000-per-year contract, took control at Maryland on Oct. 1. He called together his staff and told them his vision of what an athletic department should be.
He said he wanted to create a broad-based program -- in which all 23 sports were created equal and the academic needs of athletes would be nurtured. General goals, for sure, but after nearly five tumultuous years, they needed to be stated.
"When you left that meeting, you felt like he was talking to you about real issues, serious issues," women's volleyball coach Janice Krueger said. "He wasn't promising the world; he was giving us a plan."
Geiger confronted problems that vexed Perkins. A year-old charge that Maryland basketball coaches had viewed a preseason workout was resolved when Geiger imposed a five-day postponement on the start of the 1990-91 season. The ** action impressed Williams, who talks of laying down stronger roots at his alma mater.
nTC "I'm buying a house now, and that would not have happened before Andy got here," Williams said.
Last week, Geiger soothed emotions in the wake of the rejection by the school's admission office of two men's basketball recruits. Geiger voiced his support for Maryland's stringent entrance standards while announcing plans to hire a full-time recruiting coordinator to act as liaison with the admissions department.
"There needs to be a strategy to bring in students at all ends of the spectrum," Geiger said.
Krivak credits Geiger with strengthening the football program. Playing in the Poulan-Weed Eater Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La., wasn't a glamorous assignment, but it was a signal that the football team was making some progress on the field.
"Andy says things that he means," Krivak said. "He is the boss, and everyone knows that."
Luck is playing a part in Geiger's early success. A financial
windfall from the ACC -- courtesy of a lucrative bowl season -- gives Maryland the opportunity to balance its athletic budget for the first time since 1986.
Geiger also is benefiting from a foundation laid by his predecessor. Although Perkins' tenure at Maryland was clouded the NCAA probation handed out to the men's basketball team, he made many difficult personnel decisions, clearing away dead wood that had accumulated over the decades. Perkins took the heat by unveiling a controversial, four-tiered system for distributing dwindling athletic scholarship funds. He also kicked off a $68 million capital campaign to improve the facilities.
"I tried to straighten out an athletic program that was in horrible shape," Perkins said. "We worked very hard to put things in place to improve the program. I think Andy has done a wonderful job finishing a lot of things."
The tough times aren't over yet. Fund-raising remains a problem, and Geiger admits he is not a financial genius. He doesn't even balance his family's checkbook, leaving that chore to his wife, a former mathematics teacher.
"If left to my own devices, I will run as much program as the resources will allow, and that is a blueprint for trouble," he said.
What Geiger wants is triumph. Not just in one sport, but all sports, not just on the field, but in the classroom.
Remember: The goals are so wide now. Everyone is included. Improvise and create. The jazz buff wants a standard. The athletic director wants to win.
The Geiger resume
Job history 1990-present..athletic director, Maryland
.. .athletic director, Stanford
1975-78.. .. .athletic director, Penn
1972-75.. .. .athletic director, Brown
1970-72.. .. .assistant commissioner, ECAC
1964-70.. .. .asst. athletic director, Syracuse
Other activities NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament Committee, NCAA Special Committee on Reorganization, chairman of Pac-10 Television Committee.
Education
Graduated from Syracuse in 1961 with degree in physical education. Heavyweight eight oarsman for four years. Competed 1959 Pan American Games.
7/8