Dick Dull obit

Former Maryland AD Dick Dull Passes Away

From guiding Maryland football and basketball to navigating the aftermath of Len Bias’ death, Dull’s life reflects the cost—and character—of leadership in college athletics.

 He was not on the list.

Dick Dull was a year into his job as athletic director at Cal State Northridge in 1999 when a reporter for the Los Angeles Times asked him if Northridge had seen the end of negative publicity that plagued it due to “misadventures” before Dull took the job. The problems at the school arose from declining enrollment and having recently eliminated several team sports, related in part to an earthquake in 1995 in the L.A area.

In his response, Dull seemed to call on wisdom he had gained from the traumatic and unexpected end to his athletic director career at the University of Maryland.

“Oh, I think that kind of time bomb can go off any time,” he said “I would never suggest that intercollegiate athletics, because of its interest in the media, is ever going to be immune from a student-athlete getting into trouble, or a coach or an administrator doing something wrong. What we’re trying to do is put in place, as much as we can, systems that will give us a greater percentage of not having things happen. We just need to be forthright and honest and we don't need to be engaged in deceit and dishonesty in dealing with our constituents and with the media.”

It was typical Dull - reflective, restrained, honest, heartfelt, humble, and tinted with integrity.

Dull passed away Tuesday morning at the age of 80 due to natural causes. To most, Dull is known generally as one of the many victims of the fallout from the drug-related death of former Maryland basketball star Len Bias. But to those who knew him well before the Bias incident – as I have as well as others from a long-gone era of Maryland athletics – Dull was a mentor, a reserved, intelligent, and sincere friend, and a trusted confidant. He helped guide me through some personal challenges while I was a Maryland athlete, offering wise advice with compassion and patience. Still, a small group of us who knew him well watched uncomfortably as Dull struggled with his professional fate following the death of Bias, and how, very late in his life, he retreated to a reclusive existence.

Few knew Dull as well as Frank Costello, his teammate on the Terps track team in the 1960s and a national collegiate champion high jumper. When Costello was track and field head coach from 1974 to 1980, Dull was an assistant coach on those teams.

“He was always looking for the good in people,” said Costello, one of Dull’s closest friends. “Even in tough situations. And Dick was a sensitive guy. Anybody who is a sensitive guy and who sees tragedy, it affects them more than others. He was almost too nice of a guy.”

Erik Imler met Dull as a young boy when Dull was dating his mother, Sally, whom Dull married in 1986. More than anyone else, Imler has maintained a constant presence in Dull’s life since the mid 1980s, and he cared for Dull after his mother died in 2016.

“He was kind, generous, soft spoken, easy to talk to and was incredibly supportive as I chased my dreams of becoming a soccer player,” said Imler, a two-time All-American and national champion at the University of Virginia and a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic soccer team who later played in Major League Soccer.

Dull was a state champion javelin thrower out of Biglerville High School, located a few miles north of his hometown of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

At Maryland in 1966, Dull won the Championship of America javelin competition at the Penn Relays. He was also an Atlantic Coast Conference champion in the event. Dull relished the team’s camaraderie at the time. One season, it took him and about a dozen teammates five days to drive across the country to California in state-issued station wagons to compete at the NCAA outdoor national championships. “We would look for a hotel and a track for practice,” he says. “We would put six or eight people in a room, some sleeping on mattresses and others on box springs. It was a fraternity that you never had to join.”

Dull served a year in the Army after earning his undergraduate degree and completed his law degree from Maryland in 1971. He practiced law before returning to Maryland in 1975 as an assistant coach, working with the javelin throwers.

I was an all-conference middle distance runner on the team from 1976-80. It was during that time that I got to know Dull well, and became very fond of him. He earned his “smooth” nickname within the team because of his casual, unflappable demeanor and his dapper style. “That’s because I was the only one who knew how to dress, according to the black guys [on the team],” he said with a laugh.

In the mid-1970s, Dull was suffering through what he described as a “misdirected” period of his young adult life and found himself jobless after having worked as an attorney for several years. “It was the turbulent ’70s, and I needed to right my life,” he says, without offering details.

Former Maryland athletic director Jim Kehoe, Dull’s and Costello’s  track coach at Maryland, helped redirect Dull’s personal path, hiring him as an assistant track coach and the department’s business manager in 1975. Dull later served as an assistant athletic director in charge of nonrevenue sports. During that time Dull helped me get a job selling Maryland football season tickets after my junior year during the summer of 1979.

In 1978, Kehoe departed as athletic director with the department in the financial black. However, Carl James, his successor, soon put it back in the red, accumulating a $400,000 deficit in just two years, so Kehoe returned on an interim basis to try to right the ship. He backed Dull as his long-term successor, and Dull took over as athletic director in June 1981 at the age of 35 with an annual salary of $48,000. Dull’s stated priorities were to increase season football ticket sales and to improve the academic performance of Maryland athletes.

“I wanted the job simply out of being competitive,” Dull told me in 2002. “I used to say there’s only one side of the desk to sit on, and that’s the director’s job.”

Bob Nelligan, the women’s gymnastics head coach from 1979 to 2009, remembers Dull as a people person who showed interest in all sports. Nelligan recalls Dull attending away gymnastics meets.

“I don’t know anybody in the department who didn’t like his demeanor,” says Nelligan. “He said hi to secretaries, the guys who were cleaning the top of Cole Field House. He was very comfortable with the athletes. He was one of the few athletic directors who would show up at your office and see how you were doing. He was just one of those people who you wanted desperately to see succeed.”

Dull realized early that the men’s basketball and football teams needed to succeed, calling them the “bread and butter” needed for Maryland athletics to thrive. The men’s basketball program had gained momentum, competing in a postseason tournament for three consecutive seasons after a three-year absence. But in 1981 the football team recorded its first losing season in nine years.

Four months into his job, Dull needed to hire a football coach after Jerry Claiborne resigned to take the head-coaching job at Kentucky. Under command from university chancellor Robert Gluckstern, Dull became a search committee of one. “He said ‘You’re going to pick the coach and I’m going to approve it,’ ” Dull recalled. In perhaps his most notable move as athletic director, Dull chose Bobby Ross, whose only head-coaching job had been at the Citadel from 1973 to 1977, where he posted a 24-31 record. After leaving the Citadel, Ross worked as an assistant coach for the Kansas City Chiefs for four years before taking the Maryland job.

During Ross’s five years at Maryland, the team won three ACC titles, playing in four bowl games and earning a top-10 national ranking. Sport Magazine picked the football team as the national number one preseason pick in 1985. The success helped boost attendance. At three games staged in Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, Maryland football attracted at least 58,000 fans. More than 50,000 fans attended four other games in Byrd Stadium. Also during Dull’s reign, the men’s basketball team won the ACC tournament championship in 1984, the first time it won a conference title since 1958. The football team also won an ACC title in 1984 – the first time in history both teams took the titles in the same year.

“I viewed Dick as a rock star during his time as Maryland’s athletic director,” said Imler.

Dull’s good fortunes continued for two more years, due in large part to the success of the football team and the emerging talents of Bias. He even started discussions with Chancellor John Slaughter about a multiyear contract extension. But when Bias died on June 19, 1986, Dull’s promising future fell harder than a quarterback hit with a Randy White blind-side tackle.

On the morning of June 19 Dull was at home when Maryland Assistant Vice President John Bielec called to inform him of Bias’s death. The tragedy turned Dull’s world upside down. “I was in shell shock for about six weeks,” he says. “You go from being the fair-haired boy to people calling for you to leave. It was difficult for me to handle. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.”

Dull says he felt as if he were one of the main characters in what he called “a Greek tragedy” in which there were no winners. “I can remember walking out of my office to go to the bathroom, and someone would be following me down the hallway. It was like that every day.”

Dull testified in front of a Prince George’s County grand jury called to investigate the cause of Bias’s death as well as drug use at Maryland. Dull remembers police officers letting him out the back door of a courtroom to help avoid the throng of media covering the story.

During that time media reports surfaced about the poor academic performance of some Maryland athletes, focusing on the men’s basketball team. More than a decade later, Dull appeared to reference the issue in his typical candid, matter-of-fact manner. In 1998, he appeared before a public forum on the Cal-State Northridge campus while being considered for the athletic director’s job at the school. He admitted during opening remarks to missteps he made in the past regarding special admissions of athletes. “The scrutiny brought attention to mistakes I made,” he said. “I was encouraged to admit student-athletes who had little chance to succeed academically. My role in encouraging these admissions was a mistake.”

Within a few months of Bias’ death in 1986, after Dull publicly stated that men's basketball coach Lefty Driesell should keep his job despite the fact that he was part of the grand jury investigation, he sensed his own job was in jeopardy. His comments helped convince Slaughter that a change was needed. “Dr. Slaughter told me ‘I wish you hadn’t said that.’ He felt he had to make a decision about Driesell,” Dull said. “I painted myself in a corner because of my support for Lefty. We agreed that the situation was not going to go away unless I stepped away. I don’t have regrets.”

Slaughter says Dull was very supportive of the decision. “He felt I would be able to accomplish what I needed to do if he stepped aside. He and I sort of reached an agreement that it was the best thing to do. He was helpful to me, and I admired his courage.”

Dull resigned on October 7, 1986. On the way to the press conference announcing his resignation, according to a report in the Washington Post, Dull told Slaughter, “I might recite Martin Luther King’s words: ‘Free at last.’ ” It turns out that Dull, in the second year of a four-year contract, had been thinking about leaving when it expired. At the press conference, according to reports, he said there was more to life than “slaving away trying to manage an intercollegiate athletic program. It was about a year and a half ago that I realized I no longer had a personal or private life, that I didn’t do anything I enjoyed, like fishing, playing golf or photography.”

Dull transitioned to an athletic department consultant at Maryland for the length of his contract, some 22 months, so he could retain his salary. Dull admitted he was haunted by the Bias death and its aftermath for about a decade and sought professional help. “The stain of being at Maryland ...” he said in a York Daily Record story in 2008. “I could not get a job interview [in athletics] for 10 years.”

Said Imler, “The death of Bias destroyed him. He was never able to recover from that incident.”

Dull dabbled in real estate and worked for a travel agency, and a few years after Bias died, he worked as an administrator at University College, a night school on the College Park campus. He worked as a consultant and for a while lived off his savings. He dropped away from anything connected to Maryland.

Some of Dull’s friends talk uncomfortably about how Bias’s death affected him. “He went from a guy who was always upbeat and positive to someone sullen and sad,” said Sue Tyler, who worked at Maryland for over 20 years through the mid-1990s as a coach and associate athletic director.

Dull’s professional fortunes turned around in 1995 when he became athletic director at the University of Nebraska Kearney, a Division II school. In 1998 he took the same position at Moravian College, a Division III school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He returned to Division I sports when he became athletic director at Cal State Northridge in May 1999.

Dull worked at Northridge until 2007, when he moved back east to take the athletic director’s job at Belmont Abbey College, a Division III school near Charlotte, North Carolina. He held the job through the summer of 2008.

Dull never returned to College Park to attend a Maryland basketball game after he resigned as athletic director.  But he did see the team play in the NCAA Elite Eight at Stanford University in 2001. Then-Maryland Athletic Director Debbie Yow gave Dull tickets to the game. He said he enjoyed seeing old friends, such as broadcaster Johnny Holliday and former Sports Information Director Jack Zane. “You reach a point where you hold resentment and you hurt yourself,” he explained. “I’m a stronger person now because of it. I look at the horizon, and say ‘It can’t get any worse than that.’ ”

Dull tried to return to Maryland as an athletics administrator in 2008 when he interviewed for the position of executive director of the M Club. Nelligan, the long-time women’s gymnastics coach, served on the search committee. “Everybody loved his presentation,” says Nelligan. “And I thought he would have been a very strong candidate to unite that part of the department. But I also felt that he would always have to answer questions about Lenny. His legacy will always be tied to that.”

Dull was not selected. After giving his presentation, Dull stopped by Nelligan’s office and the two old friends talked for about an hour. Dull wanted to know how Nelligan was doing personally and asked for updates on mutual friends. A short time later, Dull sent a letter to Nelligan, thanking him for a tour of Comcast Center and making sure his buddy was OK with the fact that he didn’t get the job. “He’s had to live with this Bias thing for a long time,” Nelligan says. “He does deserve to live with some closure.”

In late 2009, during a phone conversation I had with Dull, he asked when I would write his book, saying that his story has never been told. In  2010, when I decided to write my book about the legacy of Bias–the first person I called was Dull.

When he said he would cooperate I felt invigorated about the project. He had not talked at length about how the death of Bias had impacted him. I trusted his perspective and wisdom and felt he would talk with intelligent, measured introspection about how the Bias death affected his life, and provide insight into how the athletic department dealt with the tragedy. “It’s about time the real story was told,” he told me.

But after we had several discussions on how to proceed, Dull surprised me with an email in May 2010, saying he would not participate, that he needed to continue to put “this saga behind [me].” I was disappointed, but I understood his decision. I knew from brief discussions I had with Dull during the late 1980s and into the 1990s how difficult the transition was for him after Bias died. Dull and I did have a lengthy, but incomplete discussion about the Bias death in 2003 for my first book about Maryland athletics, Tales from the Maryland Terrapins, and those comments are used in the book and in this story.

In August 2010, Dull accepted a position as a project manager in the athletic department at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, about 45 minutes from College Park. He helped raise funds for new athletic facilities at the school. The man who hired him, Hood athletic director Gib Romaine, was the defensive coordinator for Ross at Maryland and was later a fundraiser there.

In April 2011, Dull attended a reunion of former Maryland athletic department employees, some of whom had worked with him in the 1980s, at a Ledo Restaurant in College Park. It marked the first time I had seen Dull in about a quarter of a century. Typically, he mingled mostly in the background, quietly chatting with friends. And typically, he offered comfort when I asked him if he was okay with me moving forward with the book. He encouraged me to complete the project. We talked little else about it, preferring to focus instead on positive memories we both shared from our days at Maryland.

Costello also attended that reunion. This week he recalled fond memories of Dull. “I’m a very type “A’ person, but Dick was always very calm,” he said. As an example, Costello told of how the two approached a conflict differently during a track team practice when Costello was head coach. “We had signs all over the track saying it was closed during our practice,” said Costello. “A guy was jogging in lane 1 and I told him the track was closed. He kept going. I’m getting a little pissed. I said, listen buddy, it’s your last lap. Dick walked up to me and said, ‘calm down, it looks like he’s not going to be running much longer.” Soon after the runner left the track.

Dull enjoyed photography, often traveling long distances to attend Formula 1 auto races, documenting the trip with his camera. For a time Dull traveled alone annually to Reykjavik, Iceland. He told me once that the city was his favorite place to visit.

Costello recalled he never once saw Dull wear a pair of jeans. “Even when we went fishing, he’d wear Izod shirts,” he said, with a laugh. Dull worked as a proctor when he lived with other athletes in Ritchie Coliseum. And Costello recalled the time Dull turned him in to coach Kehoe for violating a team rule. “He wasn’t rowdy at all,” said Costello. “And he coached the way he lived. Very technical and smooth.”

The job at Hood College was Dull’s last. Shortly before his wife Sally passed away in 2016, Dull moved back to Charlotte to live near his stepson, Erik, and his family.