Merten's impact felt in balance of academics and athletics

Merten officially stepped down from the presidency on Saturday after serving in the position for over 15 years (photo by John Powell).

Attendees who attended a George Mason University men’s basketball game in the past would have most likely seen the Green Machine blasting the school’s fight song, the Patriot Platoon, cheering on their fellow classmates and, President Alan Merten, in his courtside seat, barking at the referees over a bad call and armed with a t-shirt launcher that resembles a bazooka.

When the basketball season begins this fall, however, the man who claims to have missed as few as five Mason basketball games in his career will be absent. The president of the university will be gone.

Building a Culture of Success

Throughout his 16 years as president, Merten was instrumental in building George Mason into the successful residential institution that it is today. His outgoing nature and visibility with the campus body captivated the hearts of students, faculty, staff and visitors of the school.

When Merten took office in July 1996, he envisioned Mason as an expanding institution, growing in size, quality and reputation. And through the combination of academics and athletics, Merten noticed the opportunity to grow the university at a faster rate than it had ever been done before.

“I saw that it could really work if [academics and athletics] were in tandem or in a complementary fashion. That athletics, if done properly, could enhance the reputation and quality of the university,” said Merten.

Merten emphasized the importance of quality and “doing it the right way” especially when it came to the athletic department. He saw athletics as a “window” into the university, providing the public with the first glimpse into the school. In conjunction with athletic director Tom O’Connor, Merten was faced with many opportunities to capitalize on the success of the athletic department while enforcing the priority of academics.

“We always understood that athletics were not bigger than the university,” said O’Connor. “It’s the front door to the university in many ways. It should be clean when you walk in.”

According to Provost Peter Stearns, no faculty member or dean has come to him and said that a coach has provided special treatment to a student-athlete in his twelve years at Mason. Merten meant it when he said he wanted no gray areas between academics and athletics.

In his previous stops at the University of Michigan, the University of Florida and Cornell University, Merten witnessed firsthand the power that athletics can have on an institution’s public perception for better and for worse.

As dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of Florida, Merten dealt with the ominous cloud of NCAA sanctions on both the football and basketball programs. He witnessed the effects of probation as both teams received two year probations (football was charged with 67 NCAA infractions and was forced to vacate their 1984 national championship; basketball faced violations including an ineligible player and improper benefits by coach Norm Sloan). Controlling the athletics situation took precedence over academics and other functions and that didn’t sit well with Merten.

“It was impossible as the dean to go to an alumni group and talk about the school of management or the academics of the university because they always wanted to talk about the problems of athletics,” said Merten.

The turmoil that happened at Florida was motivation enough for Merten to make a priority of a culture of integrity and fairness to achieve success. In order to reach this goal, two things needed to happen, along with Merten’s vision: the hiring of a legendary coach and arguably the wildest March anyone had ever seen.

The Hiring of Coach L

From the beginning, Merten wanted basketball to continue to be a fixture sport at the university and unless there was a massive amount of financial infusion, it would take priority over the other sports. Athletic director Tom O’Connor had fostered a well-managed athletic department and had made a big name hire in coach Paul Westhead, who most notably coached Loyola Marymount and a handful of NBA teams. But after four seasons, Westhead had a record of 38-70 with the Patriots and O’Connor felt a change had to be made and he began the search for Westhead’s successor.

In his search, he stumbled across a gritty coach at Bowling Green State University with nearly 30 years of coaching experience; his name was Jim Larranaga.

Larranaga impressed Merten and O’Connor with his knowledge of Mason and his familiarity of the mid-Atlantic region from his years at the University of Virginia. On April 1, 1997, he was hired as the seventh men’s basketball coach in George Mason history.

Shortly after Larranaga was hired, he received a phone call from Merten inviting he and his wife, Liz, to attend the Business Man Hall of Fame black tie affair with Merten and his wife, Sally. At the end of the evening, Merten asked Larranaga if he had rented the tuxedo he was wearing. The coach replied with a nod and the president told him that he would be “doing this regularly.”

“This left a huge impression on me,” said Larranaga. “I felt like I had his support before I had even coached a game.”

Merten and Larranaga were very close friends during their tenures at the university. They often spent Sunday mornings enjoying brunch together with their wives, talking politics, culture and the current events of the day.

“At other schools, I never really got to know the president. During my 14 years, he was my closest friend. I spent more time socializing with him than anyone on campus,” said Larranaga, who left for the University of Miami in April 2011.

Across the next eight seasons, Larranaga established a winning program, finishing seven of the eight seasons with a winning record. Between 1997 and 2005, the Patriots appeared in two NCAA tournaments and received invitations to the NIT twice. But, it was the 2005-2006 season that put both the team and the school in the hearts and minds of the entire nation.

March is Mad

The Patriots’ miraculous run to the Final Four as a No. 11 seed could not have been predicted. Las Vegas gave them a 100-1 odds to win a national title out of a field of 64 teams and they were, at the time, the lowest seeded team to reach the semifinals. Though the majority of the country doubted Mason’s talent and status being a mid-major school, they had the backing of their president from the start.

“I was always impressed by the support he showed the basketball team. We were all like his sons. He held Mason basketball to a higher athletic standard,” said Lamar Butler, the Patriots’ starting guard on the 2006 team.

This attitude towards athletics, along with leveraging the publicity that the university received from the run, helped grow the name recognition of the university. The number of applicants increased by 22 percent from 2005 to 2006 and the size of campus tours tripled. Over a six year span (from 2005 to 2011) the overall population of the university grew by over 3,000 students, making it the largest university in the state of Virginia.

“It became a whole vendetta of the university,” said Merten. “We wanted to make sure everybody and their brother knew about George Mason University.”

The emphasis on using the Final Four as a platform to market was influential to driving interest to the university and expanding the George Mason brand across the country. A school that once received applicants from mostly within the state of Virginia has broadened its enrollment worldwide at a rapid pace. One of the first things people think of now when you mention George Mason is the Final Four run and that has opened the front door to the rest of the university.

This weekend Merten will clear out his office that has been occupied over the course of almost two decades. He will pack away all of the photographs, reminders of a memorable career. His “lucky chair” and a framed piece of the old scoreboard at the Patriot Center will be loaded up.  The George Mason chapter of Merten’s book will close and a new page will be turned. Though his plans for the future are undetermined, one thing’s for sure, he will be up for the challenge.

“When I first came here this was a really good place; he’s made it a better place,” said O’Connor. “As it relates to intercollegiate athletics, he’s given us an opportunity and the support to make sure that we are always looking forward and never looking back.”