I was eight years old when Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose in 1986. During that same year I watched the space shuttle Challenger explode on live television, and I fell in love with the New York Mets as they won their second World Series Championship. I remember the Challenger and I remember the World Series, but I don’t remember Len Bias. I was too young to understand the implications of Bias’s death at the time and it had very little impact on me.
To be honest, Bias’s death still has very little impact on me. When it came time to choose a college to attend in 1996, ten years after his death, the fact that Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose in College Park did not even remotely factor into my decision to attend Maryland. In fact, I hadn’t even heard the story. Only after I enrolled at UMD did I learn of the tragedy.
Hearing of Len’s death was like hearing a ghost story. Len Bias, a young man with boundless talent, had his pure heart poisoned by an evil drug. The first few times I heard the story told I was made to believe that his overdose came the first time he ever touched a drug. Bias was the martyred saint of drug victims, and his death ignited the holy war on drugs.
Over the last decade I have had a chance to meet alumni that knew Bias and the rumor is that the night he overdosed wasn’t the first time he tried the drug cocaine. I would venture to say that drugs were a routine part of the college lifestyle for many college students in the 1980’s. While his death is sad, tragic, and historic in many ways, the saddest part of Bias’s story is that he was one of many young victims whose lives were snuffed out by drugs just like his. If his death served as a cautionary tale at the time and the resulting news coverage saved the lives of young people who then thought twice about trying cocaine, then Bias’s death did have a purpose.
It’s now twenty-three years later. Since attending UMD in the late 90’s, I’ve seen countless shows, specials, and clips of the death of young Bias. At first this footage touched me. As time has gone on, there are two emotions that have begun to dominate my perception of the coverage.
First, while Len Bias’s death must not be forgotten, I feel as though it has been capitalized on enough. The story of Len Bias’s death has been packaged, sold, and repackaged so many times that the media has made a fortune in covering this story. The story has been told in so many was that I have trouble understanding the facts of the incident. Does this constant retelling of his story continue to dissuade college kids from doing cocaine? I don’t think it does. Does it sell commercials? Yes.
Second, I feel as though the story continues to damage the reputation of the University of Maryland. The school is a much different place today than it was in 1986. Maryland is more academically stringent and well regarded than it was twenty-three years ago. It’s gone from being known as a party school to being known as a top university for liberal arts, social sciences, and hard sciences. Yet, every time a story airs about Len’s death we’re hearkened back to the days when Maryland was Cocaine Central. It’s no secret that Maryland has a tough time recruiting and retaining athletic talent from its own state. How many times have opposing recruiters used this story to scare the parents of a top recruit?
Len Bias’s story is history and it should not be forgotten. I don’t mean to minimize its importance. I’ll watch “Without Bias” tonight, but it will bring me mixed emotions to do so. On the one hand, I’ll watch it with Terrapin pride, knowing that the school used his death as a catalyst to clean-up its campus and become a top notch university. On the other hand I’ll watch it with ambivalence, too young to remember the incident and hoping that the truth is portrayed. One thing I’d like to communicate to you is that the University of Maryland did not kill Len Bias, Len Bias did. May his tragic death be portrayed with dignity, and then let us let the man rest in peace.
-terphed (http://shellgames.wordpress.com/)
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I also have mixed feelings about the airing of this. While I know this show will portray the University in a negative light, it makes me proud to see how far the school has come(Thanks Gary). I remember thinking Maryland was a bad place when I first started to look at colleges, and to think I may not have the grades to get in now shows how far we have come.
The weird thing is I live in Boston now, and I remember all the hoopla surrounding the 20th anniversary of his death. So I decided to look through the Boston Globe online archives to get a perspective from up here, and some how I found my way to an auction website that was auctioning off the suit he wore to the draft. That just seemed so morbid to me, and that is when I began to realize this story didn’t have the impact on the world, that it had on me. That being said, I think there are a lot of people who had his death help them make a decision about doing coke when they were young, but if you didn’t grow up in the “Drug War” era, this story is nothing more than a tragic death, or a would he have been better than Jordan debate.
I remember the day he died. I remember how big of a deal it was on the Baltimore news. I was 10 when he died and I was in High School when Walt Williams and Gary Williams were playing on probation. So though the probation and Bias’s death aren’t directly related, they are practically related. That is a long time for an event to reverberate (I hope that is the correct spelling). I have never done drugs of any kind, I base that on a lot of things like family and so forth, but I’d be lying that him dying like that, so quickly didn’t also come into play with my decision making.
I feel like it’s something painful and personal to the Maryland community, but the national media likes to bring it up every once in awhile to remind us how terrible it was because it’s sensational. It’s as if you suffered a personal tragedy twenty years ago and got through it with the help of a lot of therapy, but then you had this person that would call you every once in awhile and reopen the wound. It’s time to let it go.
I’ve got a slightly different take. Like it or not, the story has staying power. Something — maybe several things — about this story make people care about it. Plenty of columns written over the years, but this is the first Bias movie in a while, which just by its medium provided a new perspective. I liked the movie (didn’t love it), but in general I don’t have a problem with it being rehashed.
I am listening to the Terp Talk radio show that MASH is participating in right now and the filmmaker, Kirk Fraser, mentioned a few times that he hopes this movie gives closure to the Len Bias incident. He said that his goal in making the film was to tie-up all the loose ends in the story. I think closure is a good way to put it. Let’s hope this film brings some closure to Bias’s life and death to everyone.
[...] http://maryland.raycomsports.com/blog/2009/11/03/without-bias-comes-with-mixed-emotion/ [...]
Clearly this evokes some serious emotions.